The Perseverance rover arrived on Mars in 2021 and has since collected samples from many of the places it has visited, including some very promising ones. However, although it has instruments that provide clues about the composition of the rocks it chooses, its findings are only verifiable in laboratories on Earth. For this reason, NASA, together with the European Space Agency (ESA), contemplated a second part of the mission: that these remains be returned to our planet. The mission, named Mars Sample Return, was a very ambitious project and never seen before.
However, the technical difficulty of the task and the budget increases have put the mission on a tightrope. Before the launch of Perseverance in 2020, it was estimated that the project could cost at most $3 billion. However, in April of last year, NASA acknowledged that the budget had skyrocketed to $11 billion. The problems for the Mars Sample Return do not end there: a mission evaluation report indicated that, due to the complexity of the objectives, the remains collected on Mars could not be rescued until at least the 2040s.
That is why last April Bill Nelson, NASA administrator, gave a press conference assessing the outlook for the mission. “The bottom line is that $11 billion is too expensive, and not returning samples until 2040 is an unacceptably long time,” Nelson said. For this reason, the US space agency has been evaluating different alternatives in recent months that NASA will make public this Tuesday, in addition to answering questions from journalists.
At the meeting, which can be followed online (although only the audio will be broadcast), Nelson himself will be present (in which it will also be one of his last acts as administrator of the agency, since Jared Isaacman, appointed a few years ago, will soon take office. month by President-elect Donald Trump) and Nicky Fox, associate administrator for scientific missions. “The briefing will include NASA’s efforts to complete its goals of bringing scientifically selected samples from Mars to Earth, while reducing mission costs, risks and complexity,” NASA officials wrote in a release from January 3rd.
Lean on private companies
Throughout 2024, NASA has worked to renew its Mars sample return plan in a scenario that would reduce its cost and complexity. Last month, Nelson told reporters at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center that the new Mars sample return plan will include more than just NASA centers. «What is emerging is that by involving the industry (private companies), and not just NASA centers. “This is leading to much more practical proposals, where they can speed up time and considerably reduce cost,” said Nelson.
It also happens that China has announced that it plans to launch its own sample return mission to Mars in 2028 with the goal of bringing them back to Earth in 2031. So the race to recover Martian rocks has begun.
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