Space experts prepare for Martian land grab

17:29 07 July 2008 NewScientist.com news service Hazel Muir

Space experts will meet in France later this week to thrash out plans for an ambitious robotic spacecraft mission to return rocks from Mars to Earth – arguably the most ambitious interplanetary adventure ever attempted.

"This has been the holy grail for Mars scientists for a very long time," says David Parker of the British National Space Centre in London, UK. "We think it is doable, but it is going to take international collaboration and a lot of hard work to make it happen."

Mars is a hub of robotic activity, with NASA's Phoenix lander currently digging there and future landers such as the Mars Science Laboratory and ExoMars in the pipeline.

But no mission has ever returned Martian rocks to Earth, something that scientists consider essential to understanding the history of Mars and whether it ever hosted life.

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