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A comment on The NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return mission has been canceled. Parent comment

Re:The NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return mission has been canceled by fireflymetavrse on Monday September 21, 2026 @04:19PM (#49792814)
Beyond earth orbit launches actually is not that low [1]. MSR has a long history of revival and cancellation.

[1] https://spacestatsonline.com/launches/beo

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Re:The NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return mission has been canceled by imglorp on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @07:58AM (#49799842)
Would it make sense to send better robotic analyzers there than to bring the samples back here? Fighting gravity and kilometers involves spending many billions on return; a lesser amount could be spent on surface activities.
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Re:The NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return mission has been canceled by Valgrim on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @09:55AM (#49801363)
The issue is the size of some of these analysers. For instance, a synchrotron, which is required to non-destructively generate nanometer-scale 3d images of the samples are 3-4 times the size of a football stadium
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Re:The NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return mission has been canceled by adastra22 on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @11:52AM (#49803313)
An AFM can get atomic resolution imagery and is not the size of a football stadium.
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Re:The NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return mission has been canceled by Valgrim on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @12:05PM (#49803534)
An AFM is completely useless to identify the chemical elements, protein or crystalline structure inside a sample.
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Re:The NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return mission has been canceled by adastra22 on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @02:39PM (#49806113)
There are tools used in UHV surface science labs for that, in the same head as a AFM/STM.
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Re:The NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return mission has been canceled by m4rtink on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @01:31PM (#49805037)
We would need to move people and cargo back and forth eventually, so best to get started on that ASAP. Not to mention sample return has been done from the Moon & asteroid to great success, its a proven concept on how to get the most from the samples.
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