29.12.2024
Nelson: Decision on Mars Sample Return expected before new administration takes office
This illustration shows a concept for multiple robots that would team up to ferry to Earth samples of rocks and soil being collected from the Martian surface by NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover.
Credit: NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech
One of the biggest decision points for the space community, how to redesign the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, may be weeks away from an inflection point, according to outgoing NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
During a roundtable discussion with reporters on Dec. 18 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Nelson said the agency will announce the path forward on the U.S.-led initiative to return samples from the Red Planet “in the first part of January, before I leave.”
“As a matter of fact, one of the major briefings is going to occur Friday morning (Dec. 20) here at KSC,” Nelson said. “I’ve already been briefed in part. At the end of the day, I’m the decider on this stage and then we had that off to the new administration.”
A consensus inside NASA and in the broader scientific community was that the timeline for MSR and its cost was untenable. The report of the Independent Review Board, published in September 2023, suggested a mission cost of $11 billion and a return date of 2040.
Nelson said that was “way too expensive.” He also noted that NASA intended to have astronauts on Mars by the 2040s and NASA wants to be able to have those samples to study before crews start arriving.
“And so, I pulled the plug on it. And lo and behold what’s coming out and we’ll give you the results in probably the first week in January,” Nelson said. “What’s coming out is by involving industry, and not NASA centers like [the Jet Propulsion Laboratory], combining with others, they’re coming out with much more practical (proposals), where they can speed up the time and considerably lower the cost.”
Changing course
Mars Sample Return was first laid out back in 2009 as part of what was known as the ExoMars program, a partnership between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). Fast forward to August 2020, NASA established the Independent Review Board to evaluate the early architecture for the mission.
It would require a robotic rover to collect samples, the NASA Sample Retrieval Lander (SRL) with a so-called “fetch” rover to retrieve the samples and then ESA’s Earth Return Orbiter (ERO) to bring them back to Earth.
By this point, about a third of the architecture, connected to the collection of samples was in motion. The Mars Perseverance rover launched atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas 5 rocket less than a month before. It went onto reach the Red Planet with its 43 cylindrical collection tubes in February 2021.
Back on Earth, before Perseverance arrived at Mars, the first Independent Review Board included that the cost of MSR for the United States would be at least $2.9-3.3 billion, nearly a billion more than initial estimates. Additionally that review board cautioned that “we do not believe the program’s schedule and cost are aligned with its scope,” arguing that launching the in 2026 timeframe was “not achievable.”
In March 2021, Northrop Grumman received a contract from NASA valued at up to $84.5 million to provide first- and second-stage solid-fuel motors for the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), which would take the samples from the SRL up to Mars orbit where the ERO would be waiting.
Nearly a year later, in February 2022, NASA awarded a trio of contracts to Lockheed Martin connected to the SRL and the MAV. It received $35 million from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to “produce the cruise stage and its comprehensive elements, including the solar arrays, structure, propulsion and thermal properties” for the SRL.
For the MAV, Lockheed Martin received $194 million from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center to “design, build, test and deliver the rocket” and $2.6 million from JPL for preliminary design work on the Earth Entry System, which would shield the samples as they made their return to Earth.
“It’s a great responsibility to be entrusted to solve the technical challenges of this groundbreaking mission. We’re looking forward to helping NASA blaze new trails in scientific discovery,” said Lisa Callahan, Lockheed Martin’s vice president and general manager of the company’s Commercial Civil Space business at the time.
In order to get a more wholistic view of the mission ahead of the confirmation process (formally establishing schedule, cost and technical baselines), NASA convened a second Independent Review Board, chaired by NASA’s former Mars Czar, Orlando Figueroa, in spring 2023. It was through that analysis that the new timeline of returning samples in the 2040s emerged, along with the cost ballooning to around $11 billion.
The report was made public in the fall and discussed during an Oct. 20 meeting of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group Steering Committee.
“Technical issues indicated to us that the early planning dates for a ’27 or ’28 launch were simply not credible, a near zero probability that we’d be able to do it,” Figueroa said during the meeting. “Moving to 2030 offers an opportunity, and looks it is possible, but [President Biden’s] budget doesn’t quite support that.”
Because Congress is still mired in its budgeting process, opting instead to pass continuing resolutions instead of a new, complete package of spending bills, the funds available to NASA for MSR remains uncertain.
New players enter the picture
In an announcement made in April 2024, NASA stated that it was going back to the drawing board on MSR and was reaching out to industry players as well as the various NASA centers to provide alternative architectures that would get samples back from Mars cheaper and faster.
By June, the agency listed 11 studies that it was examining to find that new path. The agency awarded $1.5 million contracts to eight companies to further their studies in addition to supporting studies from JPL and Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).
Those companies included big names, like Aerojet Rocketdyne, Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman and SpaceX as well as those like Quantum Space and Whittinghill Aerospace. Rocket Lab’s proposal was accepted after the initial announcement and made public in October.
In regard to Nelson’s announcement earlier this month about the forthcoming decision and its timing, the administrator said it was part of the “normal cycle of making decisions” and said it was “unrelated to the new administration.”
Quelle: SN
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Update: 5.01.2025
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NASA to Host Media Call Highlighting Mars Sample Return Update
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EST, Tuesday, Jan. 7, to provide an update on the status of the agency’s Mars Sample Return Program.
The briefing will include NASA’s efforts to complete its goals of returning scientifically selected samples from Mars to Earth while lowering cost, risk, and mission complexity.
Audio of the media call will stream live on the agency’s website.
Media interested in participating by phone must RSVP no later than two hours prior to the start of the call to: dewayne.a.washington@nasa.gov. A copy of NASA’s media accreditation policy is online.
The agency’s Mars Sample Return Program has been a major long-term goal of international planetary exploration for more than two decades. NASA’s Perseverance rover is collecting compelling science samples that will help scientists understand the geological history of Mars, the evolution of its climate, and prepare for future human explorers. The return of the samples also will help NASA’s search for signs of ancient life.
Quelle: NASA
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Update: 9.01.2025
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NASA overhauls plan to bring samples from Mars back to Earth
NASA on Tuesday announced an overhaul to its plan to collect samples from Mars and return them to Earth.
Agency officials said they have decided to scrap parts of their original plan to cut down on the mission’s technical difficulty and cost and to shorten the timeline for when the samples could be brought back.
Through its Mars Sample Return Program, NASA has for more than two decades been inching toward the goal of retrieving samples of Martian soil that NASA’s Perseverance rover has been collecting since 2021. To do that, the agency had been working to develop multiple new spacecraft to relay the samples off the Martian surface and fly them back to Earth.
NASA said in its announcement it is changing the plan for the spacecraft that will land on Mars to retrieve the samples and exploring two new, different options.
One of the options is to attempt a style of landing similar to what NASA successfully executed with the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. As each rover made its descent, rockets were fired to slow the spacecraft, and an intricate sky crane then lowered them to the Martian surface.
The second option would be to work with private space companies to send a new lander to Mars.
NASA plans to pursue both possibilities in tandem before it makes a final decision about which to use in 2026.
Space industry experts had speculated for months about the fate of the Mars Sample Return Program, which has fallen behind schedule as its budget has swelled.
“The cost began to accelerate to the point that earlier this past year, it was thought that it could be as much as $11 billion, and you would not even get the samples back until 2040,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said at a news briefing Tuesday. “That was just simply unacceptable.”
NASA’s original plan called for developing a “sample retrieval lander,” which would have been equipped with two helicopters to retrieve the sealed sample tubes of rock, soil and atmosphere that Perseverance has collected and cached. The lander would also have carried a rocket to launch the samples off the Martian surface.
Perseverance, which touched down in 2021, has been exploring a 28-mile-wide basin north of the Martian equator that scientists think was home to an ancient river delta.
NASA's earlier plan called for the helicopters to gather the rover's samples, after which the lander’s robotic arm would load them into the rocket. Then the rocket would blast off the Martian surface and jettison a capsule containing the samples while it was in orbit around the planet.
After that would come yet another cosmic relay: The capsule would be intercepted by a spacecraft designed by the European Space Agency, and the precious cargo would begin a journey to Earth.
The details of the design for a different lander and how it would gather the samples once it is on Mars are not yet clear. NASA said, however, that both of the new options involve a smaller rocket system to blast off the Martian surface.
The two alternatives would still use the European-developed vehicle for the journey back to Earth.
Nelson said the changes to NASA's plan could allow samples to arrive back on Earth as early as 2035, but he added that, depending on NASA funding, the timeline could extend to 2039.
He said that the sky crane option would be likely to cost $6.6 billion to $7.7 billion and that the commercial route would be likely to cost $5.8 billion to $7.1 billion.
NASA officials emphasized the importance of studying the samples.
“Mars Sample Return will allow scientists to understand the planet’s geological history and the evolution of climate on this barren planet where life may have existed in the past and shed light on the early solar system before life began here on Earth,” Nicky Fox, head of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement. “This will also prepare us to safely send the first human explorers to Mars.”
However, NASA has faced scrutiny in recent years over the cost and timing of several of its biggest programs, including the Mars Sample Return initiative and the Artemis return-to-the-moon program.
The United States also faces increased competition from China, which has made rapid advancements in its space program over the past decade. Last year, China became the first country to collect and return samples from the far side of the moon, and Chinese officials have said they intend to launch a mission to retrieve samples from Mars and return them to Earth by around 2031.
Nelson, however, said that NASA’s plan is more intricate than what Chinese officials have spoken about publicly and that the U.S. program is centered on answering fundamental questions about Mars’ history, rather than being driven by a space race.
“You cannot compare the two missions,” he said. “Will people say that there’s a race? Well, of course people will say that. But it’s two totally different missions.
Quelle: NBC News