Astrobiology Special Collection: Instruments for In Situ Exploration of Planets

摘要

This collection of papers arose from a session we organized for the American Geophysical Union (AGU) fall meeting in San Francisco in December, 2006. The session was intended to present a summary of the state of the art of in situ exploration approaches and related problems. The contents of the papers published in this issue of Astrobiology include a significant amount of progress that has occurred since that meeting. Planetary exploration missions are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their instrument capabilities, as evidenced by Cassini-Huygens, the Mars Exploration rovers, and the NASA Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and ESA ExoMars selections. In the AGU session, we engendered debate about the comparison of current approaches to sample handling and in situ instruments with their terrestrial laboratory counterparts, and we encouraged discussion as to future requirements and possibilities.