EURO-CARES as Roadmap for a European Sample Curation Facility

EURO-CARES (European Curation of Astromaterials Returned from Exploration of Space) was a three year (2015-2017), multinational project, funded under the European Commission's Horizon2020 research programme to develop a roadmap for a European Extra-terrestrial Sample Curation Facility (ESCF). Such an ESCF was designed to receive and curate samples returned from Solar System exploration missions to asteroids, Mars, the Moon, and comets. So far, there are only two facilities dedicated for unrestricted returned samples: the NASA Johnson Space Centre in Houston (USA) and the JAXA Hayabusa curation facility in Sagamihara (Japan). Previous studies of an ESCF were either country-specific (e.g., [1]) or mission/target specific (e.g., MarcoPolo-R [2]). With the EURO-CARES project we proposed to move onwards from these specific studies, using experience accumulated at NASA, JAXA, and in various laboratories and museums curating meteorites, in combination with expertise from biosafety laboratories, cleanroom manufacturers, electronics and pharmaceutical companies, nuclear industry, etc. Long-term curation of extra-terrestrial samples requires that the samples are kept as clean as possible to minimize the risk of detrimental contaminants, at the same time ensuring that Martian samples remain contained in case of biohazards. The requirements for a combined high containment and ultraclean facility will naturally lead to the development of a highly specialized and unique facility that will require the development of novel scientific and engineering techniques. We report here a summary of the EUROCARES study.