Analogue Sites for Mars Missions - A report from two workshops

Abstract:

Fieldwork, at terrestrial sites that are analogous in some way to Mars, has a key role in defining questions addressed by Mars missions. For MSL, the question is whether its landing site was habitable, and for Mars 2020, the question is how do we search for and what are signs of life in ancient habitable environments. Implementing these investigations by means of a rover mission on a distant planetary surface has challenges due to a limited set of tools and period of operations. Using this context of planetary missions is important in shaping how analog research can be used to advance planetary science.

Following a successful 2010 AGU fall meeting session entitled “Analogue Sites for Mars Missions”, two community workshops were held at The Woodlands, TX March 2011 and the Carnegie Institute of Washington in July 2013. These activities represent an ongoing dialogue with the analogue and mission communities. The AGU session solicited presentations of current analogue research relevant to MSL, at which time the landing site selection process was still considering four final sites. The 2011 Woodlands workshop solicited details on representative science questions and analogue sites by means of an abstract template. The output from The Woodlands workshop was an initial metric to assess the utility of analogue sites against specific science questions, as well as recommendations for future activities.

The 2013 Carnegie workshop, followed up on some of the recommendations from 2011. Both on-line interactive dialogue and in person discussions targeted broad topics, including 'the advantages and problems of using a great terrestrial analog for field testing', and 'knowing what we currently do about Mars, what would be the best place on the planet to collect the first suite of samples to be returned to Earth? What would be appropriate analog sites on Earth?'.

The results and recommendations from both workshops are summarized to publicize and stimulate this ongoing discussion.