In advance of the Mars landing on 18 February 2021, members of the Analytical Chemistry group at Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (University of the Basque Country) in Leioa, Spain presented their research on how temperature controlled experiments (including Raman spectroscopy, X-ray fluorescence and XRD analysis) can be used to characterise geological materials ranging from historical artefacts from the Roman empire to regolith samples from Mars.