NASA Mars sample return program is expensive and will take too long
- April 18, 2024
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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NASA Mars sample return program is expensive and will take too long
Subject: Geography
Sec: Indian geography
Context:
- In response to budget cuts and escalating costs, Nasa is reevaluating its ambitious Mars sample return mission aiming to develop a more feasible and cost-effective approach.
More on news:
- NASA’s Perseverance Rover, nicknamed Percy, in 2023 created the first sample depot on another world by putting down ten rock sample tubes that are slated to be returned to Earth as part of the Mars Sample Return Campaign.
- One problem is that the plan is too expensive and will only be executed by the year 2040.
- The space agency is working with internal offices to develop a new plan based on innovative and proven technology.
- It is also soliciting architectural proposals from the industry to return samples in the 2030s along with lowering cost, risk and mission complexity.
- An independent review of the return program conducted last year referred to it as a highly constrained and challenging campaign that had unrealistic budget and schedule expectations from the beginning.
About Mars Sample Return (MSR):
- Mars Sample Return (MSR) would be NASA’s and ESA’s (European Space Agency) ambitious, multi-mission campaign to bring carefully selected samples to Earth.
- MSR would fulfill one of the highest priority solar system exploration goals from the science community.
- Returned samples would revolutionize our understanding of Mars, our solar system and prepare for human explorers to the Red Planet.
Other plans of NASA and ESA:
- According to the current plan, both NASA and the European Space Agency are meant to work together on the first effort to bring something back from Mars.
- ESA’s fetch rover is supposed to take the samples collected by Perseverance and take them to a NASA-provided Mars ascent vehicle which will then launch into Mars’s orbit.
- An Earth Return Orbiter will take these samples from the ascent vehicle and bring them back to our planet.