NASA has two options for returning Mars samples by 2030 that are less expensive than $7 billion.
After seeing its initial proposal swell to $11 billion, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is proposing a faster and less expensive method of returning rocks and dirt from Mars.
On Tuesday (January 7, 2025), less than two weeks before he steps down as NASA’s administrator after President-elect Donald Trump takes office, Administrator Bill Nelson gave a revised scenario.
Given the skyrocketing expenses and the impossibility of receiving anything back from Mars before 2040, Mr. Nelson claimed to have “pulled the plug” on the initial sample return plan months ago.
In order to guarantee that the samples gathered in cigar-sized tubes by NASA’s Perseverance rover reach this planet in the 2030s, far before astronauts travel to the red planet, NASA asked business and others to devise better solutions last year.
Mr. Nelson stated, “We would like to return 30 titanium tubes at the lowest cost as soon as possible.”
According to the space agency, it is examining two solutions with prices between $6 billion and $7 billion, one of which would include creative ideas from business partners. NASA said the suggested solutions would simplify the mission, but the number of spacecraft and launches would stay the same.
After engineering studies outlining the specifics of each alternative, a final decision would be made the following year. The more conventional option would employ a rocket-steered platform called a sky crane, which is the same landing technique used to lower NASA’s Perseverance and Curiosity rovers onto the Martian surface. The second alternative, which was not fully detailed in the most recent version, would involve a landing system created by private enterprises.
Since landing in 2021, Perseverance has gathered over two dozen samples, and more will follow as part of NASA’s top priority hunt for evidence of ancient, tiny Martian life. In labs on Earth, scientists want to examine the samples taken from the long-dry river delta on the red planet.
In order to survive Martian dust storms, NASA officials emphasized that both solutions would make things easier by cleaning the sample tubes on Mars’ surface rather than in the returning spacecraft and converting from solar to nuclear power.
According to Mr. Nelson, the future government will have to choose the best course of action for retrieving the Mars samples, and funding must begin to flow immediately to make this happen. Mr. Trump has picked software millionaire Jared Isaacman, who has soared to prominence twice on his own initiative, to succeed Nelson.
Mr. Nelson stated, “We wanted to give them the best options so that they can go from here.”
