NASA is on a mission to revolutionize the way we bring Martian treasures back to Earth. The U.S. space agency announced on Monday its search for innovative designs that can transport valuable samples from Mars, aiming to make the process more affordable and efficient.
For over two decades, the dream of bringing Mars samples to Earth has driven international planetary exploration. Since landing on Mars in 2021, NASA's Perseverance rover has been diligently collecting samples, setting the stage for their eventual return to our planet.
The next ambitious phase of this mission involves a collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA). The plan? To deploy a second robotic lander to Mars that will retrieve the collected samples and launch them into Martian orbit. From there, a third spacecraft will rendezvous with the samples and make the journey back to Earth.
Originally, NASA anticipated launching the retrieval and orbital vehicles between 2027 and 2028, with the samples expected to return to Earth in the early 2030s at a projected cost of $5 billion to $7 billion. However, an independent review has raised concerns. The review suggests that the actual costs could escalate to as high as $11 billion, pushing the return date to 2040.
\"The bottom line is an $11 billion budget is too expensive, and a 2040 return date is too far away,\" said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. He emphasized that maintaining such high funding levels would strain other major NASA science objectives, including missions to Saturn's icy moon Titan, upcoming missions to Venus, and a near-Earth object surveyor.
Nelson highlighted the unprecedented challenges of this mission: \"Safely landing and collecting the samples, launching a rocket with the samples off another planet – which has never been done before – and safely transporting the samples more than 33 million miles back to Earth is no small task.\" He called for innovative, out-of-the-box solutions that are both affordable and timely.
While NASA officials remain committed to the mission, they have indicated the possibility of leaving some of the over 30 samples collected by Perseverance behind on Mars. The majority of the samples are housed within the rover, with a smaller backup cache stored at a collection site on the planet's surface.
Looking ahead, Nelson expressed optimism that the brightest minds at NASA, Japan's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and aerospace industry partners will collaborate to overcome these challenges. \"These are folks who can figure out rather difficult things,\" he affirmed.
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NASA seeks innovative designs to transport Mars samples to Earth
cgtn.com
