If we do a search for REMS+Mars on the internet, we get about 4 million hits. This means that our project has had a reasonable impact on society. Although, of course, much lower than REM, the music band, for which the search engine gives us more than 155 million results.

REMS has placed the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) among the elite of planetary exploration. Being able to participate in the most ambitious mission sent to Mars to date has been a real challenge for the Centre’s researchers.

When the project began in 2004, shortly after the CAB laboratories were set up in their current location, we were unaware of the challenges we were about to face. We were embarking on a path that not all the team had travelled before. What we did know was that we were absolutely determined to do it. Today, the perspective is totally different. We have managed to form a team of scientists and engineers who walk together, with a very close relationship with the industry and with an experience gained that, for sure, will allow us to face the next challenges in a much more solid way.

The second issue of Zoé is devoted entirely to REMS, in response to the interest it has aroused both inside and outside the centre. Its pages show the enormous work done up to the launch: the science that is to be done, how it is designed, and how we are preparing for the moment of landing and the beginning of the two exciting years that await us as we explore Mars.

We must continue to make an effort to disseminate science and technology, so that the distance between science projects and music bands becomes smaller and smaller. This issue of Zoé is a new effort in this direction.

Javier Gómez-Elvira – Director of Centro de Astrobiología (CSIC-INTA) and REMS Principal Investigator.