NASA needs help extracting rocks from Mars, but on Tuesday, NASA officials announced that the method has not yet been fully determined. Instead, the final decision will be left to President-elect Donald J. Trump.
But officials said they have figured out a way to launch the mission and bring Red Planet rocks back to Earth faster by reducing the size and weight of the mission, known as Mars Sample Return. Cost estimates last year had risen to as much as $11 billion. With this revision, Mars sample returns, while still expensive, will be less than $8 billion.
“This is a far cry from $11 billion,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a telephone news conference Tuesday.
Bringing samples of Martian rock and soil to Earth is one of the top priorities for planetary scientists. Spacecraft in orbit and rovers on the surface of Mars are discovering a lot, but their capabilities are limited. By studying fresh rocks up close using the latest and most powerful instruments in the lab, scientists can unravel mysteries of the Red Planet's past, including perhaps whether life ever formed there. There is a possibility.
The first phase of Mars sample return is already underway. NASA's Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars in 2021, has been drilling and collecting cylindrical samples of rock and soil in Jezero Crater, which contains an ancient river delta.
The rest of the plan, devised by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, requires intricate choreography. First, a new robotic spacecraft will land near the Perseverance rover, which will deliver about 30 rock samples and launch them into orbit around Mars. Another European Space Agency spacecraft was scheduled to pick up the samples, bring them back to Earth, and land them in the Utah desert in a small saucer-shaped vehicle.
The plan remained essentially unchanged, but the key change was the realization that the rockets needed to launch samples from the surface of Mars into orbit around Mars did not need to be as large and heavy as originally designed. That's what happened.
The miniaturization of rockets means that NASA no longer needs to build a lander larger than those it has built previously.
Instead, the mission could once again use the sky crane system successfully deployed on the robotic probes Curiosity and Perseverance, which are currently exploring Mars. A sky crane lowers a lander carrying a rocket by cable from a hovering rocket stage.
NASA officials also left open the possibility of purchasing a lander from a private company instead of a sky crane.
Nelson, who will step down as NASA administrator when the presidential transition takes place later this month, said NASA officials under the Trump administration would likely make a decision within the next year.
“What we wanted to do was give them the best possible options so they could move forward from here,” Nelson said.
But he also said Congress needs to provide at least $300 million this year to prevent further delays to the plan.
Like many of NASA's most ambitious projects, Mars Sample Return aims to do something that has never been done before, so it's difficult to predict how difficult and expensive it will be. is.
Initially, the two spacecraft needed for the mission (a lander built by NASA and an orbiter built by the European Space Agency to bring back the rocks) were scheduled to launch in 2026, and NASA would pay 30% of the cost. It was expected to be worth $1 billion.
An independent review in 2020 concluded that a 2028 launch date was more realistic and the cost would be between $3.8 billion and $4.4 billion. A second study in 2023 found these predictions to be too optimistic. NASA's mission share would instead be $8 billion to $11 billion, the panel said. Officials concluded that the stone will not be delivered to Earth until 2040.
“We solved that problem,” Nelson said.
NASA then solicited alternative ideas from experts within aerospace companies and space agencies, either starting an entirely new mission from scratch or suggesting better ways to accomplish certain parts of the current plan.
A team within NASA evaluated options and devised changes that were more of a fix than a complete overhaul.
“We're really excited about this,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. “As always, my priority is to find a path forward for sample recovery within a balanced overall science program so that NASA science continues to deliver results.”
Dr Fox said one could be launched as early as 2030, and the other as early as 2031.
Other changes include switching from solar panels to radioactive heat sources to provide power and simplifying the system for transferring rock samples from Perseverance to the rocket that launches them into space.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory delayed work on its Mars sample return and laid off more than 500 employees, about 8 percent of its workforce, last February after NASA announced it was looking for new ideas. .
NASA officials declined to elaborate on commercial options. Since its initial proposal, NASA has selected eight companies, including aerospace giants like Lockheed Martin and two upstart rocket companies led by billionaires: Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. The research was commissioned.
Musk has prioritized reaching Mars with his next-generation Starship rocket, promising to launch a version of that rocket to the destination unmanned in 2026. However, Starship is still under development and has not yet orbited Earth.
