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
