After months of turmoil over the future of a vaunted mission to bring samples from the Red Planet back to Earth, NASA has delivered its verdict on returning samples from Mars.
The space agency is “committed” to bringing those rocks back from Mars, Administrator Bill Nelson said Monday, but it will have to do it with much less money and in much less time than currently planned.
And how exactly is NASA going to achieve this? Right now, he has no idea – and he’s looking for someone who does.
“I have asked our collaborators to request information from industry, the (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and all NASA centers, and present an alternative plan this fall that will allow (the samples) to be recovered more quickly and at lower cost,” Nelson said during a press conference at NASA Headquarters.
His comments came in response to a independent review commissioned by NASA last year, which said there was “almost zero probability” that Mars Sample Return would reach the proposed 2028 launch date, and that there was “no credible way” to fulfill the mission within its current budget.
Carrying out the mission as designed would likely cost up to $11 billion, the review panel found, with samples not reaching Earth until at least 2040.
“At the end of the day, $11 billion is too expensive, and not returning the samples until 2040 is way too long,” Nelson said. “It is in the 2040s that we will land astronauts on Mars.”
This announcement constitutes something of a blow for JPL, the La Cañada Flintridge institution responsible for managing the mission. JPL already has laid off more than 600 employees and 40 contractors this year after NASA ordered it to cut spending in anticipation of budget cuts caused by the challenges of returning samples to Mars.
Proposals will soon be sent to all NASA centers and the private aerospace sector for “a revised plan that uses innovation and proven technology to reduce risks, reduce costs, and reduce mission complexity so that we can return these truly valuable samples on Earth in the 2030s.” ” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate. The deadline for proposals is next month, and those selected for further study will receive grants from NASA this summer.
This essentially puts JPL in a position where it must compete for its own project.
“Right now, if JPL were to figure out the answer, then I would say JPL is going to do pretty well,” Nelson said during Monday’s news conference. “But we’re opening this up to everyone because we want to have every new and fresh idea possible.”
NASA’s decision to outsource a solution to the problem of returning samples to Mars has frustrated some Martian scientists.
“What I expected was for NASA to step up and say, ‘These things are hard and we choose to do them,'” said Bethany L. Ehlmann, a planetary scientist at Caltech. “This is the leadership required to be the world’s leading nation in space exploration.”
A joint project with the European Space Agency, Mars Sample Return would deliver rocks, rubble and dust already collected and sealed in tubes by the Perseverance rover.
The current design relies on a lander that would retrieve these tubes from the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater and use a small rocket to transport them to Martian orbit, where they would meet a spacecraft that would make the return trip to Earth. The rocket would land on Earth about five years after the orbiter launches.
The ultimate goal is to comb the samples for evidence of life on Mars and help NASA plan future manned missions, Nelson said.
In the most recent ten-year survey of planetary sciencesa report prepared for NASA every 10 years by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicineplanetary scientists named the Mars Sample Return mission “the highest scientific priority of NASA’s robotic exploration efforts this decade” and argued that the program should be completed “as soon as practicable, with no increase or decrease in its current scope.
But the authors cautioned that this ambitious mission should not come at the expense of other planetary science, suggesting a cap of around $5 billion to $7 billion.
“Mars sample return is of fundamental strategic importance to NASA, U.S. leadership in planetary science, and international cooperation and should be completed as quickly as possible,” the report indicated. “However, its cost should not compromise the long-term programmatic balance of the planetary portfolio.”
The agency is committed to keeping the mission within the recommended budget, Nelson said. Allowing Mars Sample Return costs to reach the $8 billion to $11 billion estimated by the review panel would require NASA to “cannibalize other programs, other science programs, and there are so many that are absolutely important,” Nelson said.
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