EURO-CARES: PROJECT ROADMAP OF A EUROPEAN SAMPLE CURATION FACILITY

Introduction: EURO-CARES (European Curation of Astromaterials Returned from Exploration of Space) is a three year, multinational project, funded under the European Commission's Horizon2020 research pro-gramme to create a roadmap for the implementation of a European Extra-terrestrial Sample Curation Facility (ESCF). Such an ESCF would be designed to receive and curate samples returned from Solar System explo-ration missions to asteroids, Mars, the Moon, and com-ets. So far, there are only two facilities of this type: the NASA Johnson Space Centre in Houston (USA) and the JAXA Hayabusa curation facility in Sagamihara (Japan). However, these two facilities do not meet all requirements for sample return missions from Mars. Previous studies of an ESCF have either been country-specific (e.g., [1]) or mission/target specific (e.g., for Marco Polo-R [2]).