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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 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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