Meet the Martians

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Dr Susanne P Schwenzer

Can you give a brief overview on your background?

I am a mineralogist, who studies water-rock reactions and volatiles. My masters thesis was on hydrothermal minerals in the Black Forest area in Germany, and my PhD was in noble gases in Martian meteorites.

Can you give an overview of your current job?

I am a senior lecturer in the School of Environment, Earth and Ecosystem sciences, and an associate director of AstrobiologyOU.

What is your involvement with Mars Sample Return?

I am a member of the Mars Sample Return Science Campaign Group, a group who looks at all aspects of how to best preserve, process, analyse and distribute these precious samples. My role is mainly focused on the noble gases and alteration minerals.

What value do you think Mars Sample Return will bring to the scientific community?

When investigating rock samples, it is incredibly important to know the context from which they came. Although the meteorites we have from Mars are very valuable and have returned much information, they lack this context. Also, they are all igneous and impact samples, so we don’t yet have any sedimentary rocks. Sample return solves both these issues: we will get sedimentary samples and – even loose soil – and we will know exactly where they were collected. In addition, we will be able to deploy all the instruments we have here on Earth for their investigation, and we can even invent and build new ones in the years to come. The samples from Mars will keep being investigated for decades to come – just like the lunar samples the Apollo missions brought back.

What kind of sample collected by Perseverance are you most excited to see returned and why?

I think it is the collection of all the samples together, including the ‘empty tube’ that will have the martian atmosphere in it, that is most exciting. We are trying to piece together a really, really complex story of rock formation, alteration of those rocks, and the question if life ever took hold in them. Therefore, I was really excited to see that the first rock core collected already had it all: original igneous minerals, alteration phases, and organic compounds!

What type of analysis are you most excited to see conducted on the returned samples?

I don’t think we can focus on just one type of analysis, as we need to understand such a complex story. We need to start by having a good look, and then work our way to more and more complex investigations as we start to understand the samples better and better. But if I am being pushed hard, then it would be the noble gases in the atmospheric sample, as they could tell us so much about the martian climate.

How did you get involved with Mars Sample Return?

I’ve been involved since the time I started my PhD. That was over 20 years ago, but Germany already had a programme for laboratories to push the boundaries of analytical methods to prepare for sample return. I measured noble gases in all the martian meteorites known at the time – just nine, which tells you how long ago that was!

What do you enjoy most about working on Mars Sample Return?

Mars Sample Return isn’t something we do for the moment – it is something we do for a long future to come. I always compare this to the Apollo samples, which we investigate and find out new things about the Moon 50-plus years after they were brought to Earth. The samples from Mars will surely tell us a lot of things in the first few years after they have been returned. However, there will be more, much more to come, with scientists who are not born today investigating the samples in the future. That’s what is so exciting, and so different from the other activities we do as researchers.

Do you have any advice for aspiring scientists who would like to get to work on Mars Sample Return in the future?

Find a subject that excites you, then focus on getting as good as you can in that subject. Mars Sample Return needs everyone – scientists ranging from mineralogists and geologists to biologists, engineers, chemists and physicists, but also artists, writers, lawyers, social scientists… everyone. It will always be a very competitive environment, hence being at the top of your own game and leading your field will always be important.

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Dr Lydia Hallis

Can you give a brief overview on your background?

I studied geology at Imperial College London before moving on to gain a PhD focused on the Apollo Moon rocks, funded by the Natural History Museum. I then moved to the University of Hawaii, where my interest in martian meteorites really began.

Can you give an overview of your current job?

I work within the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences at the University of Glasgow, where I spend half of my time teaching planetary science to our undergraduates, and half of my time researching the water content and organic molecules found within meteorites.

What is your involvement with Mars Sample Return?

I am a member of the Mars Sample Return Campaign Science Group (MCSG). The aim of this group is to help maximize the scientific potential of the Mars samples that will be returned to Earth for in-depth analysis. These samples are only small test-tube sized cores, so we don’t want to waste any material. I just came back from a fieldtrip to the Isle of Rum (off the west coast of Scotland), where we collected rock samples that bear a remarkable similarity to the Séítah formation sampled by the NASA Perseverance rover. The Rum rocks will be used as analogue samples, to help determine how the Séítah sample will react to various types of analyses once it is returned here to Earth. In effect, the analogue samples provide vital test runs, where it doesn’t matter so much if things go wrong!

What value do you think Mars Sample Return will bring to the scientific community?

Much like with the Apollo missions to the Moon, it’s difficult to predict the wide-ranging ways that Mars Sample Return will impact science. What I can say is that Mars Sample Return is building purposefully on past Mars missions to rewrite our knowledge of Mars and the wider Solar System. It will drive innovation, inspire the next generation of scientists, and perhaps even answer the most fundamental question we’ve ever asked ourselves as a species: Are we alone in the Universe?

What kind of sample collected by Perseverance are you most excited to see returned and why?

I am most excited by the igneous samples, as these are the oldest samples that will be returned. Igneous samples can tell us a lot about the long history of environmental change at Jezero crater over the past 3 billion years or so, including how liquid water and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere have interacted with sub-surface environments. These samples can also give us an indication of what early Earth was like – we live on such a dynamic planet that almost all trace of Earth’s crust beyond 3 billion years old has been destroyed. In contrast, the lack of plate tectonics on Mars means that the oldest rocks are still preserved at the surface for us to investigate.  

What type of analysis are you most excited to see conducted on the returned samples?

As a mineralogist, I am most excited to see what variety of minerals are contained within the samples. Minerals can tell us a lot about the type of environment a rock formed in, for example if was water present at the time. They can also indicate the chemistry of the martian interior.

How did you get involved with Mars Sample Return?

As a planetary scientist I have worked with meteorites here on Earth, including meteorites from Mars, for the past decade. I specialise in non-destructive analyses of very tiny samples, sometimes at the atomic scale, in order to answer big picture questions about planetary formation. This experience allowed me to become a member of the MCSG, as we are currently working on how to get the most science out of every sample.

What do you enjoy most about working on Mars Sample Return?

I get to mess around with Mars rocks all day!

Do you have any advice for aspiring scientists who would like to get to work on Mars Sample Return in the future?

There are many pathways into space science, whether you are interested in studying the returned rocks or gases (geology and chemistry), helping to build the next generation of spacecraft (engineering), or shaping international policy to allow collaboration between nations (politics). You do not need to be a genius (I am certainly not!) you just need to be hardworking and dedicated to your goals.

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Dr Kimberly Tait

Can you give a brief overview on your background?

I am a mineralogist/crystallographer by training, I received my PhD from the University of Arizona in 2007. I do not have any formal training in planetary science, it’s all learned on the job overseeing the meteorite collection. But studying rocks from Earth or Mars is very similar!

Can you give an overview of your current job?

I am the curator in charge of all the Earth Sciences collections, so meteorites, rocks, minerals and gems. I have a unique job where I am also cross-appointed at the University of Toronto, where I teach, have graduate students and participate as a faculty member.

What is your involvement with Mars Sample Return?

I have served on two Mars Science Planning Groups (MSPG1 and MSPG2 groups). For the MSPG2 group I co-chaired the curation team focus group and was the first author on a manuscript of our findings that was published in the journal, Astrobiology.

What value do you think Mars Sample Return will bring to the scientific community?

If we consider that the samples brought back from the Apollo program over 50 years ago are still producing high impact investigations, then I believe that the samples from Mars will feed generations of scientists for their studies. Mars is such a similar planet to ours and is geologically and biologically ‘dead’ – no active volcanism or water on the surface and no life that we have detected. What happened? When did this happen? Will this happen to our planet? I think these answers need to come from Mars, not Earth. Our planet is so active – it has done a great job of recycling [and destroying] some of its earliest history. If you think of the story of life like a book, the first few chapters have been ripped out of Earth’s ‘book’. Certainly, some of that crucial information can be found in the rock record on Mars.

What kind of sample collected by Perseverance are you most excited to see returned and why?

The sedimentary rocks, for sure. We have such a sampling bias with the samples that can make it to Earth by natural processes. We do not have sedimentary rocks from Mars represented in the meteorite collections now, so this will be the most interesting to me. How much carbon-rich material is present in the sedimentary rocks? Could these rocks tell us about the possibility of life on Mars? What about the water processes that formed them? I cannot wait to see these rocks!

What type of analysis are you most excited to see conducted on the returned samples?

I would really like to be on the Curation team when the samples arrive on Earth, so I may or may not be able to analyse them. I want to support the efforts of others studying them, if that doesn’t happen. I am very interested in the biological type measurements that will be done on these samples. Are they rich in biological material that we lose with meteorites entering Earth’s atmosphere burning up? The search for life in the Solar System is so fascinating, and certainly Mars will be a good place to look. I do not personally do these types of measurements; I’m interested in mineralogy and what that tells us about the conditions when minerals formed. If we date the minerals that were formed by volcanoes, when did they stop erupting? Was it wet when the minerals formed? When did water leave the surface? Was there a more robust atmosphere at one time? The minerals will tell these stories – we just need them here on Earth to get them into the laboratory!

How did you get involved with Mars Sample Return?

Honestly, a bit by accident. I take care of a large martian meteorite collection but, being in Canada, I never thought that I could be part of Mars Sample Return. Canada is a member state of the European Space Agency (ESA), so through ESA I can participate. A member of MSPG1 asked me to fill in for him at a meeting he could not make – I must have not said anything too outrageous because they asked me to be a full member of the committee. From there I have applied for other committees. I am passionate about protecting Mars samples when they return and make them as accessible as we can to the scientific community.

What do you enjoy most about working on Mars Sample Return?

The people that I have met along the way. I loved that during the COVID-19 pandemic, this was a community that didn’t stop working tirelessly for these samples, and we’d meet every week. I’ve worked with people all over the world on this project, and I have learned so much from everyone. I really enjoy hearing different people’s perspectives about sample analysis, and how to keep the samples safe and accessible. Working together is the only way this will work.

Do you have any advice for aspiring scientists who would like to work on Mars Sample Return in the future?

I want to say that it is never too late! Again, I have very little formal training in planetary science, but I have a PhD in mineralogy and studying Mars rocks is very similar to studying Earth rocks, after you learn a bit of terminology. I think people assume people that work on MSR have all this Mars experience – the truth is we all come from different backgrounds and that why this community is so rich!

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