Ma_Miss will be part of the ExoMars mission, scheduled for 2028
Is there or was there ever life on Mars? An Italian instrument that will travel to the red planet aboard the Rosalind Franklin rover, in the ExoMars mission, scheduled by the European Space Agency (ESA) for 2028, will try to answer one of the questions that most occupy the minds of astronomers.
Named Ma_Miss (acronym for Multispectral Imager for Subsoil Studies on Mars), the equipment had its ability to search for life forms demonstrated in a study by the National Institute of Astrophysics (Inaf), the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and of Aix-Marseille University, France, published in the journal Astrobiology.
Produced by the aerospace giant Leonardo, the instrument was designed to study the mineralogy and physical properties of the Martian subsoil. However, by completing a series of tests, the researchers demonstrated that the spectrometer can also detect the presence of organic substances.
“We wondered if Ma_Miss could give us some information, not only mineralogical, but also relating to the presence of organic substances directly in the subsoil. And the answer was positive”, explained Marco Ferrari, INAF researcher and first author of the study.
The analyzes that Ma_Miss will be able to carry out in the Martian subsoil will not alter the samples in any way, and the possible identification of organic material would be definitive proof of the presence of current or past life on the red planet.
“Initially the task of the Ma_Miss was to provide a mineralogical context to the collected samples, but we have shown that it can do much more, namely perform the direct identification of some types of organic material”, said Eleonora Ammannito, scientist responsible for the instrument at ASI and co-author of the study. .
Source: Terra
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