Official Opening: On the 14th of November 2024, the Mars Sample Return Analogue Sample Library (MSR ASL) will become officially open for sample requests and allocations.
MSR ASL is a collection of analogues relevant to the rocks sampled by Perseverance in Jezero Crater on Mars. The collection has been established via partnership between NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and ESA (European Space Agency) and is now stored and curated at the Natural History Museum, University of Oslo.
The MSR ASL Opening Ceremony will include a scientific symposium with talks presenting various aspects of exploration of Mars and will be followed by the visit to the collection facility.
Program:
Scientific symposium: Location: Natural History Museum, Tøyen hovedgård (map).
9:00 – 10:00 Arrival, registration and coffee
10:00 – 10:30 Welcome and opening talks:
10:00–10:10 Welcome from Brit-Lisa Skjelkvåle, Director of the Natural History Museum in Oslo
10:10–10:20 Welcome from Bernd Etzelmüller, Head of the Geoscience Department, University of Oslo
10:20–10:30 Welcome from Arvid Bertheau Johannessen, Lead of Human Spaceflight and Exploration, Norwegian Space Agency
10:30 – 11:20 NASA-ESA Mars Exploration Program and Mars Sample Return overview:
10:30 – 10:40 Orson Sutherland (ESA, Mars & Beyond Projects Group Leader)
‘ESA’s Exploration Programme: Mars and Beyond’
10:40 – 10:50 Lindsay Hays (NASA, Mars Sample Return NASA Lead Scientist)
‘How to get to Mars… and back!’
10:50 – 11:00 Gerhard Kminek (ESA, Mars Sample Return ESA Lead Scientist)
‘What we expect to learn from the samples returned from Mars’
11:00 – 11:10 Alvin Smith (NASA, Project Manager, Sample Receiving Project)
‘How we are planning a facility to receive Mars samples’
11:10 – 11:20 Andrea Harrington (NASA, Mars Sample Return Curation Lead)
‘How we will curate Astromaterials from a Restricted Planet’
Margin, questions and break
11:50 – 12:30 Mars Sample Return Analogue Sample Library presentation:
11:50 – 12:00 Elliot Sefton Nash (ESA, Project Scientist, Sample Receiving Project)
‘The need for an MSR Analogue Sample Library’
12:00 – 12:10 Fiona Thiessen (Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research)
‘Selecting and collecting: Field Campaigns for Mars Analogues’
12:10 – 12:20 Agata Krzesińska (University of Oslo)
‘Assembling and curation of the MSR ASL collection’
12:20 – 12:30 Luke Griffiths (Norwegian Geotechnical Institute)
‘Laboratory characterization of rock and soil samples from the MSR ASL collection’
14:00-16:00 Official opening of the MSR ASL Facility
By invitation only. Location: Natural History Museum, Økern (map)
Press, if interested in visiting the facility, please contact us at msr-asl (at) geo.uio.no
Attendance via Zoom
The scientific session will be streamed via zoom. For zoom link click here.
For questions about the opening ceremony please contact:
msr-asl (at) geo.uio.no or Stephanie Werner (PHAB, UiO), Agata Krzesinska (PHAB, UiO), Marine Ciocco (PHAB, UiO) or Axel Müller (NHM, UiO).