Overburden from a Lafarge granite quarry in Mountsorrel, Leicestershire has been used by space research and development specialists Magna Parva to mimic Martian rocks for an exhibition about interplanetary drilling tools that are being designed for the planned NASA and European Space Agency rover mission to Mars in 2018.
Magna Parva has already been working on the ExoMars project for the last five years. The project?s main mission is to discover the secret of life on Mars by drilling below the surface of the planet, taking and testing samples of rock, and then beaming back the results.
?Our stand at the Farnborough Airshow showcased the research and development we are doing on tools for drilling holes and sampling rocks on other planets such as Mars,? explained Andrew Bowyer, the managing director of Magna Parva. ?We called Lafarge because we knew the overburden from Mountsorrel was red and we asked for a small amount of rock to simulate the surface of Mars for our display. The stand certainly caused a lot of interest.?
Together with the University of Leicester, Magna Parva is building the Life-Marker Chip, known as the Mars ?pregnancy test? which will assess samples for biomarkers indicating the presence of life past or present.
Angus Shedden, the operations manager at Mountsorrel Quarry, said Lafarge was proud to be a part of the ExoMars project. ?We were delighted to assist Magna Parva with rocks from Mountsorrel for their Mars display,? he said. ?It?s not often we are asked to provide minerals to help showcase such an exciting and significant scientific project.?
Sources: Lafarge UK, The Hub Weekly, Aggregate Research
