Marco Polo and Meteorites

December 2, 2008 / Posted by: Aaron Gronstal

Asteroids and comets have been a major focus of recent NASA missions. From Deep Impact to Stardust, and the current Dawn mission, astrobiologists have been examining these fascinating celestial bodies in order to understand the role they may have played in the origin of life on our planet. These rocks in space are also ancient records from a time when our solar system was being born. The wealth of scientific information that can be gleaned from asteroids has also sparked interest from space agencies outside of the United States. In a new podcast, Beda Hofmann, of the Natural History Museum in Bern, Switzerland, discusses Europe’s proposed Marco Polo mission. Marco Polo is a European Space Agency mission that would drill into an asteroid to collect samples, and then return the samples to Earth.

Source: [Astrobiology Magazine]