The latest change to NASA's fluctuating Mars sample return plans explained
- Cosmic Arc
- Jul 15, 2024
- 2 min read
Picture of NASA's updated mission architecture taken at COSPAR 2024
In the past 24 hours, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory director Laurie Leshin presented a revamped design for the Mars sample return's lander utilizing a skycrane, which was previously used for the Mars rovers Curiosity and Perseverance. JPL stated that this revised design would allow for a lighter lander mass and cheaper launch costs. [1]
This isn't the first change to the MSR missions, as last year JPL announced that their Mars sample return lander, in addition to carrying the first rocket on another planet, would also be carrying 2 Ingenuity-like fetch helicopters to collect samples left by Perseverance. [2] Ingenuity was originally intended as a tech demo expected to last for a few days, but it broke all expectations when it performed 72 flights in the Martian air over a period of nearly 3 years, with its final flight being in January of this year when damage from landing permanently grounded Ingenuity. Similar to the skycrane, this was also intended as a mass reduction plan, using helicopters with proven reliability, far lighter and faster than a regular Mars rover like with the previous plan.
Since landing on February 18th, 2021, Perseverance has left many samples spread around the floor of Jezero crater, which is thought to contain a dry river delta, evidence of liquid water having existed on the Martian surface for a period in its ancient history, giving us new insights into the red planet's history and helping us figure out if life did once exist on Mars.
Sample left by Perseverance (Credit: NASA)
This year, NASA sought out mission proposals from partners in the industry [3] (most notably Blue Origin and SpaceX) to design their own concepts for returning samples to Earth, some involving the hardware of those companies, like SpaceX's Starship, which SpaceX has their own ambitions for. MSR has faced many budget issues and technical problems, such as its high-risk mission architecture, with plenty of failure points, notably in areas where we are unfamiliar with when it comes to space exploration, involving a lot of firsts.
These redesigns would hopefully resolve issues with MSR, enabling us access to the first pure samples from another planetary surface, paving the way for future crewed missions.
References:
