Preliminary Program for Analysis of Mars Samples

A multi-disciplinary committee of scientists emerged in France since 1999, whose work is devoted to Mars sample return. Basing on the assumption that key ingredients for life, liquid water and a source of energy were present on ancient Mars, groups are currently developing strategies to detect potential extinct and/or extant life. To confirm the potential controversial of discovering life, the most sensible idea before the return of samples, is to perform high sensitive in situ analyzes exploring well-defined sites from the surface and subsurface. For this purpose, a large community from geology, astrophysic, chemical and biological sciences works to build an interdisciplinary frame, defining sites of interest, physical and chemical conditions for remote sensing and in situ approaches, devising fast, highly resolvent, and non-destructive methods.

The first step of our program is to draw up a general protocol (including recommendation according to planetary protection), then to optimize methodologies and to produce experiments under conditions mimicking those that are characteristic of the planet mars (irradiation, temperature, pressure, hydrous potential, salts etc.)