Mission to bring back soil samples from Mars gets 2018 launch

0 Comments | AFP, July, 2008

PARIS (AFP) — Space experts on Wednesday set a date of 2018 for launching the Mars Sample Return mission, billed as the most complex and costliest exploration of the Red Planet ever planned.

The unmanned mission aims to pick up soil and rocks from Mars and bring them back to Earth, where big labs can wring far more data from them than by remote control using small instruments on a scout vehicle.

"2018 will start the era of Mars Sample Return," Doug Mc Cuistion, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Programme, told a press conference.

The preliminary report, issued in Paris by a working group, sketched a mission profile and flight design but also cautioned that many challenges lay ahead.

Its authors said that, regardless of the start date, it would take...