The Icebreaker Mars Mission: Breaking Mars Ice for Biomolecular Evidence of Recent Life

A mission concept (originally envisioned in 2006 as a Phoenix follow-on) proposes to penetrate the ice-cemented Mars subsurface that stymied the Phoenix scoop, looking for preserved biosignatures. A 2010 Discovery proposal was prepared (but not submitted) and subsequently Icebreaker was submitted to NASA’s Discovery program calls in 2015 and 2019. In 2019 the mission was rated as a Category II and selectable. Icebreaker would land in the ice-rich mid-latitudes of Mars and collect samples down to 2m depth to 1) search for molecular signatures of life and 2) assess the habitability of the icy regolith in the context of recent orbital cycles. A future Icebreaker proposal would address high-priority scientific questions within NASA’s Planetary Science program and as outlined within the National Academies’ Decadal Survey on Planetary Science and Astrobiology 2022-2023 [1]. Icebreaker also could address most of the science goals of the Decadal Survey-prioritized Mars Life Explorer (MLE) mission concept, which would search for “signatures of life and understand habitability of near-surface ice”.