The Summary
- NASA has announced an overhaul to its plan to bring samples from Mars back to Earth.
- Agency officials have decided to scrap parts of their original plan to cut down on the difficulty and cost.
- Instead, NASA plans to pursue two alternative options simultaneously.
A revision to NASA’s plan to gather samples from Mars and bring them back to Earth was disclosed on Tuesday.
According to agency officials, they have chosen to abandon some of their initial plans in order to reduce the technological complexity and expense of the operation and to expedite the return date of the samples.
NASA’s Perseverance rover has been gathering samples of Martian soil since 2021, and the agency has been working toward retrieving these samples for more than 20 years through its Mars Sample Return Program. The CIA had been developing several new spacecraft to carry the samples off the Martian surface and return them to Earth in order to do that.
In its release, NASA stated that it is examining two new and alternative alternatives and altering the plan for the spacecraft that will arrive on Mars to recover the samples.
Attempting a landing technique akin to the one NASA accomplished with the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers is one of the choices. Rockets were fired to decelerate the spacecraft as each rover descended, and they were subsequently lowered to the Martian surface by a complex sky crane.
Working with private space businesses to launch a new lander to Mars would be the second possibility.
Before deciding which to utilize in 2026, NASA intends to investigate both options concurrently.
For months, experts in the space business had been speculating about what might happen to the Mars Sample Return Program, which has been running behind schedule due to an increase in its budget.
At a news briefing on Tuesday, NASA administrator Bill Nelson stated that the cost had increased to the point where it was estimated earlier this year that it may reach $11 billion and that the samples would not even be returned until 2040. That was just not acceptable.
In order to recover the sealed sample tubes of rock, soil, and atmosphere that Perseverance has gathered and stored, NASA’s initial design called for building a sample retrieval lander including two helicopters. The samples would have been launched off the Martian surface using a rocket that was also carried by the lander.
Since landing in 2021, Perseverance has been investigating a 28-mile-wide area north of the Martian equator that scientists believe formerly contained an ancient river delta.
According to NASA’s previous design, the rover’s samples would be collected by the helicopters and then loaded into the rocket by the robotic arm of the lander. Once in orbit around the planet, the rocket would launch a capsule with the samples after blasting off the Martian surface.
Another cosmic relay would follow: a spacecraft built by the European Space Agency would intercept the capsule and start the valuable cargo’s journey to Earth.
It is yet unclear how a different lander would be designed and how it would collect the samples after it lands on Mars. Both of the new solutions, according to NASA, use a smaller rocket system to launch off the Martian surface.
For the return trip to Earth, the two options would continue to utilize the European-built vehicle.
According to Nelson, the modifications to NASA’s plan might enable samples to return to Earth as early as 2035, but he also mentioned that the schedule might go as far as 2039, contingent on NASA financing.
According to him, the commercial route would probably cost between $5.8 billion and $7.1 billion, while the sky crane option would probably cost between $6.6 billion and $7.7 billion.
NASA representatives underlined how crucial it is to examine the samples.
According to a statement from NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Nicky Fox, the return of the Mars Sample will help scientists learn more about the planet’s geological past, the climate change on this arid planet where life might have once existed, and the early solar system before life on Earth. Additionally, this will get us ready to send the first human explorers to Mars securely.
The expense and schedule of some of NASA’s largest missions, such as the Artemis return-to-the-moon program and the Mars Sample Return initiative, have drawn criticism in recent years.
China, which has advanced its space program quickly over the last ten years, is another growing rival of the United States. Chinese officials have stated that they plan to conduct a mission to retrieve samples from Mars and return them to Earth by about 2031. Last year, China became the first nation to collect and return samples from the far side of the moon.
However, according to Nelson, NASA’s plan is more complex than what Chinese officials have publicly discussed, and the U.S. effort is focused on finding answers to basic questions about the history of Mars rather than being motivated by a space race.
He stated that it is impossible to compare the two missions. Will anyone mention that a race exists? People will say that, of course. However, the two missions are very different.
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