Key role for Spain in 2020 Mars mission technology

Two unmanned missions – one by NASA and another by the European Space Agency (ESA) will set off for the red planet next year from around July, and will take about seven or eight months to complete, using a monitored crewless craft which will analyse the surface of Mars in depth.

The idea is to see whether it could ever have been inhabited at any time, or if it could potentially house life.

Spain's rôle will be significant – enough to put it on the world science map, according to Dr Fernando Rull, retired dean of Valladolid University and founder of the Raman Applied Cosmogeochemical and Astrobiological Infrared Spectroscope (ERICA).

He has come out of retirement to join the team, and his star invention will play a major part.

ERICA's participation will involve creating calibration cards that form part of the SuperCam built into the space vehicle – a task that has already taken three years to develop.

The SuperCam allows for highly-detailed analysis of the planet's surface in a very simple operation.

Spain's part in the ESA mission will involve creating a spectometer to examine material found beneath the planet's crust in a bid to seek out possible traces of life.

For the NASA mission, the project carried out in Valladolid started between the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014 when Dr Rull approached two US operations with his ideas, and a contract was signed in 2015 to the value of around US$2 billion (about €1.81bn).

The ESA project was presented in 2004 and selected two years later to become part of its mission.

But it is not all happening in outer space, says Dr Rull.

“The new knowledge and technology generated for these projects could well have a multitude of uses on earth afterwards,” he explains.

Similar investigations on our own planet could, for example, help follow the traces of life forms now extinct or reveal the early strains of modern-day flora and fauna, and monitor the effects of climate change.

And Rull says science and technology in Spain has made giant leaps in the last few years, 'even though it is not yet at NASA's level or at that of countries with more resources, such as France and Germany'.

In every case, the University of Valladolid's involvement in the Mars missions will bring 'great benefits' to Spain, both financial and in terms of PR, Rull explains.

“Hypothetically, if any minimum contact with life was indeed to be found on the red planet, it would be an extraordinary feat for science – and Spain would have been part of the team that found it,” he says.

Valladolid's 'space adventure' does not stop at the NASA and ESA Mars missions, either: in the year 2024, the MMX Mission (Martian Moons eXploration) will seek to collect samples from the planet's two moons, Fobos and Deimos – a project developed by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency and which Spain will take part in as a guest along with the ESA and NASA.

Photograph by the ERICA Investigation Group at Valladolid University