NASA’s Perseverance rover took this photo next to a rock where it drilled samples. NASA wants to bring the samples collected by this rover back to Earth.
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NASA’s Perseverance rover took this photo next to a rock where it drilled samples. NASA wants to bring the samples collected by this rover back to Earth.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
On the surface of Mars, a rover filled more than two dozen airtight titanium tubes with pristine rock samples, each a little thicker than a pencil.
Some tubes have been hidden on the surface of the Red Planet, while others are contained in the rover’s belly. NASA and the European Space Agency are considering returning some of these precious rock samples on Earth, the culmination of a decades-long dream to recover pristine rocks on Mars.
The ambitious, multibillion-dollar effort, however, has been hampered by concerns about soaring costs.
Now, during a press briefing Tuesday, NASA officials said the agency will explore two different mission plans simultaneously and wait until the second half of 2026 to make the final decision on which to pursue.
One of the two options would use proven methods of landing on Mars demonstrated by past rover missions, such as the “sky crane”, but would require the use of a smaller ascent vehicle than previously considered for remove rocks from the planet. .
The second option would rely on commercial launch and landing capabilities that are not yet fully developed, but appear promising.
Either option would be “simplified, faster and less expensive” compared to the original plan, the NASA administrator said. Bill Nelson.
“We want to have the quickest and cheapest way to get those 30 samples back,” Nelson said. “We want to return 30 titanium tubes as quickly as possible at the lowest price.”
Previously, the Mars Sample Return mission had been estimated to cost about $11 billion and would not return a sample until the 2040s, noted Nelson, who said a reevaluation of the mission needed to be done because “this thing had become obsolete. control.”
He said either of these two new options would cost between $6 billion and $7 billion and could provide a sample by 2039.
While some experts recommended returning the samples to orbit around the Moon where they could be retrieved later, NASA officials favored a direct return to Earth, in part because “it reduces complexity,” said Nicky FoxAssociate Administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
“My priority is to find a path forward for returning samples to Mars as part of a balanced overall science program,” Fox said. “All of these new possibilities we’ve outlined today will help us get there.”
Once the Perseverance Mars rover team confirmed that the first sample tube was on the surface, they verified that the tube was out of the path of the wheels.
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The two new options being considered would result in an overhaul of the mission’s landing platform and sample loading systems. But each would still rely on an orbiter under construction by the European Space Agency that would capture the sample container in space near Mars and return it to Earth.
She said over the next year or so, teams will work on the engineering of each proposed plan.
The decision to pursue two distinct paths comes after the agency in April requested proposals to reduce the cost and complexity of the mission, and after recently consulting external experts on the different possibilities ways to move forward.
It is not clear who the new President Donald Trump and his choice to lead NASA, entrepreneur and private astronaut, will be. Jared Isaacmanwill think about all this – not to mention Congress, which holds the purse strings.
But what is clear is that the rocks stored on Mars constitute a tantalizing collection of geological treasures that lab scientists could search for signs of ancient microbial life.
Although rocks from Mars occasionally arrive on Earth as meteorites, they are rare and have been altered by their passage through space and fiery entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
In contrast, pristine Mars rocks could tell planetary scientists much more about the history of Mars and the likelihood that life evolved there. That’s why obtaining such a sample has long been a top priority for researchers, although they also feared that if costs got out of control, the project could divert funds from other important scientific missions.
When the Perseverance rover launched in 2020, it carried with it the tools and mechanisms needed to collect and store rocks. The rover landed on Mars in 2021 and quickly drilled its First of all rock sample.
Since then, as the rover has roamed the alien earth, its controllers have ordered the robot to collect samples of particularly intriguing rocks and seal them for guardcreating a carefully curated collection.
While robotic missions have brought back samples from the Moon, a comet and asteroids, no mission has ever brought back rocks and dirt from another planet.
The prospect is daunting and poses technical challenges. For example, mission planners will need to ensure that nothing from Mars could end up contaminating Earth.
Nelson noted that China is pursuing what he calls a “grab and go” mission to bring back a sample from Mars, and that final decisions on what NASA does will be made by officials in the new administration.
“I think it was a responsible thing to do, to not give a new administration just one alternative, if they want to get a sample from Mars, which I can’t imagine they don’t,” Nelson said. “I don’t think we want the one sample returned to end up on a Chinese spacecraft.”
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