Mining Mars from Houston

An anonymous reader writes "Computer simulations of what bits of Earth, Mars and Venus might be found on the moon point to new methods for extraterrestrial sample return. Because the moon is lifeless, its sterile condition gives a very rare laboratory for collecting what may be as high as 3 grams of Earth's past, from the half-ton of lunar rocks and soil that Apollo returned for study [3 grams (Earth-terran), 0.03 grams (Mars), 0.003 grams (Venus)]. While such interplanetary exchanges are now thought common, what is surprising is these pristine samples often have never exceeded a temperature of around 100 F. Any similar planetary samples found today in, say, Antarctica, would have been weathered, eroded, or contaminated."

Comments

Re:Interesting stuff

[WegianWarrior]

While recovering DNA may be hard / impossible (I'm fixing military aircraft for a living, not extracting organinc matter from rocks), we still can learn a lot of interesting things. After all, we can't extract DNA from a fossil, yet it teaches us (or rather, the guys who do that sort of thing for a living or as a hobby) a lot about the creature in question.

I am, however, reminded by a television programe I saw on Discovery Europe a while back... where they 'proved' - by setting up a simulated Mars-base in Antartica or somewhere - that human explorers might see signs of life that a robotic explorer would miss. And I'm sure they could set up a (simplified?) DNA-extraction lab in a potential Mars-base too, thus preventing any organic remains from beeing erradicated by the radiation in outer space.

Here's the link

[DredPirateRoberts]

This article is what I was thinking of.

ASTEROID sample return.

[zzztkf]

Japan's space agency,ISAS, is attepmting to send
a probe to asteroid 1998SF36 and get sample to
retrun to Earth.

Launch will take place 2003, May.

http://www.isas.ac.jp/e/index.html