ERO is an Orbiter which is placed in orbit around Mars, performs in 2028 a rendezvous with the rocket bringing the container back into orbit then returns to Earth and drops a capsule with container during the flight over it in 2031. Afterwards a soft landing, samples are analyzed in a laboratory specially designed to avoid any risk of contamination.

A Mars Science Return or MSR mission is a space mission that aims to collect samples of Martian soil and return them to Earth for analysis. This type of mission has been ranked at the top of the solar system exploration priorities by scientists for the past thirty years. Only samples of the soil of Mars, carefully selected on site for their potential interest while having the geological context, will, once brought back to Earth, make it possible to carry out in-depth analyzes thanks to the heavy equipment that only exists on our planet and so to provide information to trace the history of Mars and to determine if life existed and in what form. But this type of mission struggles to materialize because of its cost (10 billion US $ according to some estimates), the technical challenges it raises (Martian rocket, orbital rendezvous without human intervention) and the high risk of failure. . Several scenarios were the subject of more or less extensive studies from the 1980s onwards, but none succeeded in leading to a realization.

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