NASA's Mars 2020 rover mission to return Martian meteorite fragment to its Red planet home

As a part of NASA’s Mars 2020 Rover mission, a chunk of a Martian meteorite preserved at Natural History Museum will be carried back by  US ncy’s Perseverance robot. piece of meteorite, originally from Mars, was discovered on Earth in Oman in 1999 and will soon return “home.” In a press release, Natural History Museum revealed that  sample, referred to as Sayh al Uhamiyr 008 or SaU 008, was under observation of scientists since 2000.  

Head of Earth Sciences Collections at Museum, Principal Curator of Meteorites, and member of Mars 2020 Science Team, Prof Caroline Smith said, “Every year, we provide hundreds of meteorite specimens to scientists all over world to study.” She added, “But this is a first for us: sending one of our samples approximately 100 million km away back home, to furr our kwledge of Mars.” She furr explained that chunk had a huge role to play in being able to give a perspective and greater detail into scientists’ quest for life elsewhere.

Smith revealed that rock formed about 450 million years ago, got blasted off Mars by an asteroid or comet roughly 600,000-700,000 years ago, and n landed on Earth.

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SHERLOC would deploy chunk

According to NASA,  Mars 2020 mission will focus on evidence of ancient life on Mars by accumulating rocks and regolith samples. In order to achieve goal,  Mars 2020 rover Perseverance will make use of advanced high-precision laser, camera and spectrometer instrument called SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals). Such techlogy would help vehicle record finest of details on Mars’ surface. However, scientists te that re are extreme challenges as slight temperature fluctuation, or moving sands beneath rover, might lead to misalignments.  

Explaining role of meteorite in mission, scientists wrote in press release that when rover lands on Mars’ Jezero Crater in February 2021, SHERLOC would deploy chunk as a testing compound that would provide accuracy and precision in mission. “When you start work for day, you need to measure materials you kw very well and that you kw composition of. This allows you to be confident that instrument is working properly before you start working with new samples,” Smith said.  

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(Im Credit: AP)