NASA’s Answer to Mars Sample Return Problem: Develop Two Plans

NASA’s Perseverance rover has been hard astatine enactment connected Mars, collecting pieces of stone and stowing them distant connected the Red Planet. But backmost connected Earth, the abstraction bureau has been struggling to transportation retired its program of retrieving the Martian samples. Following months of deliberation, NASA has decided to prosecute 2 alternate routes for its Mars Sample Return program, 1 of which elicits the assistance of the backstage industry.

During a media briefing connected Tuesday, NASA announced an antithetic attack to its ambitious Martian illustration mission. The abstraction bureau volition simultaneously prosecute 2 antithetic ways of brining samples from the different satellite to Earth. “Pursuing 2 imaginable paths guardant volition guarantee that NASA is capable bring these samples backmost from Mars with important outgo and docket redeeming compared to the erstwhile plan,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said successful a statement.

In April 2024, NASA called connected the backstage manufacture to travel up with alternate ways to prime up Martian stone and particulate from the Red Planet and driblet them disconnected connected Earth. The abstraction bureau asked for proposals for a little analyzable ngo architecture that would little outgo and bring the samples to Earth astatine an earlier date. Five months later, the bureau received 11 studies from some the NASA assemblage and manufacture players, and a squad was formed to measure the champion mode to instrumentality the samples.

At this point, NASA volition proceed with “two chiseled means of landing the payload level connected Mars,” the abstraction bureau wrote. The archetypal enactment volition impact tried and tested means of landing connected Mars utilizing a entity crane akin to ones utilized by NASA’s rovers, portion the different enactment volition opt for a caller method developed by a commercialized partner.

The 2 pathways would impact a smaller mentation of the Mars Ascent Vehicle, a lightweight rocket designed to motorboat the tubes containing the samples from Mars into the planet’s orbit. Both missions would besides trust connected the European Space Agency’s Earth Return Orbiter, which is designed to seizure the orbiting illustration instrumentality successful Mars orbit. The illustration instrumentality volition clasp 30 tubes.

“NASA’s rovers are enduring Mars’ harsh situation to cod ground-breaking subject samples,” Nicky Fox, subordinate head for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said successful a statement. “We privation to bring those backmost arsenic rapidly arsenic imaginable to survey them successful state-of-the-art facilities.”

NASA has been struggling with its Mars Sample Return mission, which has precocious travel nether scrutiny for outgo overruns and scheduling delays. In September 2023, an independent reappraisal committee (IRB) issued a study on the mission, referring to it arsenic a “highly constrained and challenging campaign,” with “unrealistic fund and docket expectations from the beginning.” The ngo was primitively capped astatine a $7 cardinal fund to instrumentality the samples successful the 2030s. It was aboriginal revealed, however, that Mars Sample Return requires an $11 cardinal budget, with an estimation of returning the samples by 2040. In airy of the report, NASA began considering an alternate architecture for its analyzable mission.

Despite its complexities, Mars Sample Return is an unprecedented accidental to survey samples from different satellite up-close. “Mars Sample Return volition let scientists to recognize the planet’s geological past and the improvement of clime connected this barren satellite wherever beingness whitethorn person existed successful the past and shed airy connected the aboriginal star strategy earlier beingness began present connected Earth,” Fox said. “This volition besides hole america to safely nonstop the archetypal quality explorers to Mars.”