Oct. 22, 2025 6 AM PT
To the editor: As a member of the Mars Pattern Return staff at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, I feel your readers would profit from the next further data (“JPL’s rough ride: Can California’s shining star of space science recover?,” Oct. 19).
First, the aim of that mission is to carry again rock and regolith samples from Mars. Second, these samples are at present being collected by the Perseverance rover, which has been working on Mars for greater than 4 years and remains to be going sturdy.
Third, as introduced by NASA and described in a paper revealed within the journal Nature on Sept. 10, a minimum of one of many samples collected to date by Perseverance has proven a possible biosignature — that’s, a substance or construction that may have a biologic origin, that means it might need been produced by historical life. And lastly, if that pattern have been returned to Earth, then scientific evaluation would doubtless be capable of decide whether or not it does certainly point out prior life on Mars.
If, however, we don’t carry again this pattern as a result of the mission has been shelved, then we’ll most likely by no means know what treasured secrets and techniques it holds. That will be an enormous missed alternative and a disgrace for us all.
David Cummings, Santa Barbara
