On Wednesday, NASA has made a spectacular announcement – to increase the chances that Martian rocks can successfully travel to Earth for up-close analysis, the space agency has revamped its interplanetary delivery plan.
NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have agreed to “significant and beneficial changes” to a key part of the conceptual design of its Perseverance mission, NASA Associate Administrator Thomas Zurburchen said in a recent announcement.
This car-sized rover is the newest member of NASA’s robotic Mars fleet and reached the Red Planet in February 2021 in an unprecedented landing. Probably one of his most important responsibilities is the Mars sample return campaign. Perseverance’s six wheels leave dents in the planet’s regolith as it works toward that goal, traversing Mars’ Jezero Crater to collect the telltale sedimentary evidence that water—and possibly life—once existed there.
NASA’s Perseverance rover took this image on March 17, 2022. Here, it looks back at its wheel tracks on Mars, on the 381st Martian day, or sol, of the mission. NASA/JPL-Caltech
In October, space agencies will delve into the details of their redesign: Instead of Perseverance leaving stashes of its pebble collection on the Martian surface for another yet-to-be-built ground-based spacecraft to pick up, the existing rover will be the one carrying the precious parcels to their launch pad. In addition, Perseverance’s high-flying robotic companion, the Ingenuity helicopter, has inspired the design of two future rotorcraft that will circle over the Martian terrain to take other samples. This duo will be part of an existing concept, NASA’s Sample Retrieval Lander.
The next steps will be carried out by two other established concepts. ESA’s sample transfer arm will take the tubes containing the samples and place them in NASA’s Mars Ascent Vehicle for a journey through the atmosphere.
The rocket will carry the soil samples from the surface of Mars to an ESA orbiting spacecraft known as the Earth Return Orbiter (ERO), which will then eject back to Earth and leave them for landing and recovery.
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars copter took this image during its 20th flyby on February 25, 2022. This view from Ingenuity’s high-resolution color camera shows the northwestern part of a region, the “Séítah” region. NASA/JPL-Caltech
Agency officials said they are proposing this “advanced mission architecture” because they have determined that Perseverance will last longer than previously thought. The retrieval is currently scheduled to begin sometime in late 2027, according to the NASA announcement.
By giving Perseverance a new gig, NASA and ESA can skip building the intermediate robot they had originally dreamed up—the Sample Fetch Rover—which would have been built by ESA. Delegates from the 22 European countries of the continent’s space exploration program, Terrae Novae, looked at this advanced concept back in May. The announcement said the States “will consider ending development of the Sample Fetch Rover” in September. A month later, the new plans will begin to be implemented.
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