NASA wants to postpone the next phase of its Mars Sample Return campaign and split a lander mission into two distinct spacecraft to lower the program's overall risk.
European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA collaborate to bring several hundred Mars samples back to Earth, gathered by NASA's Perseverance rover on the bottom of the Jezero Crater's 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer) surface.
According to NASA experts, Jezero is an ideal location for such research since billions of years ago, it was home to a large lake and a river delta, both of which may have provided attractive environments for life.
A robotic rover that is part of a team from Europe and Israel moves during a training mission for planet Mars at a site that simulates an off-site station at the Ramon Crater in Mitzpe Ramon in Israel's southern Negev desert on October 10, 2021. - Six astronauts from Portugal, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, and Israel will be cut off from the world for a month, from October 4-31, only able leave their habitat in spacesuits as if they were on Mars. Their mission, the AMADEE-20 Mars simulation, will be carried out in a Martian terrestrial analog and directed by a dedicated Mission Support Center in Austria, to conduct experiments ahead of future human and robotic Mars exploration missions.
NASA, ESA Pushes Back Mars Sample Return
At the recent National Academies' Space Studies Board, NASA Associate Administrator for Science Thomas Zurcuchen announced that NASA and RSA have agreed to change the schedule and design of upcoming missions to return the Martian rock samples collected by NASA's Perseverance rover to Earth.
According to the ESA's return mission concept, the initial plan entailed sending a Sample Lander to land near Perseverance's landing site and deploying a Sample Fetch Rover to locate NASA's Mars rover and recover the collected samples once it did. The rover will then return to its lander and load the samples into a single huge canister that will be carried into Mars' orbit by the Mars Ascent Vehicle, which will take off from Mars and bring the container into orbit.
After that, the Mars Ascent Vehicle will wait for an Earth Return Orbiter to grab the sample canister and enclose it in a biocontainment system. After that, the orbiter will return to Earth and release the entry capsule, which will transport the samples to a specialist processing facility.
The samples would have been returned to Earth in 2031 if this mission had been successful.
To lessen the total risk of the program, the new version of the mission planned for splitting the lander missions into two independent spacecraft: one to take the Sample Fetch Rover to Mars, and the other to carry the Mars Ascent Vehicle.
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According to an Independent Review Board study, the mission's launch should be delayed until 2027 or 2028 to allow for a fair development timetable.
NASA and the ESA agreed to the proposals. They changed their plans for the return mission, separating the Sample Retrieval Lander into two landers and launching the mission in 2028, according to Zurbuchen.
The Martian rock samples will arrive on Earth in 2033, two years later than the initial schedule.
According to Zurbuchen, the Phase A investigation showed that the single lander violates entry, descent, and landing heritage. He emphasized that the procedure is "very risky."
A dual-lander concept would let NASA and the ESA employ the same landing method used by Perseverance and Curiosity and avoid the complexity of a single-lander design.
Budget Differences
NASA officials wrote in a description of the agency's allocations in the White House's 2023 federal budget request: "Detailed analysis of SRL landed mass requirements has led NASA to adopt a dual-lander architecture, with the second lander carrying the European-provided fetch rover."
In the fiscal year 2023, the budget request funds $822 million for Mars sample return, an increase of $169 million over the previous year's request.
NASA officials said per Space.com that the increase isn't happening in a vacuum. They added that it is putting pressure on the remainder of the Planetary Science portfolio and may damage the portfolio's balance in future years.
NASA's decision to delay the launch of its NEO (near-Earth object) Surveyor mission by two years, to no earlier than 2028, and to discontinue funding for the international Mars Ice Mapper project, for example, was influenced by the additional money now required for Mars sample return, according to agency officials.
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