NASA no longer knows how to recover its Martian soil samples!
Samples taken by the Perseverance rover on Mars. © NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
These are not 10 lightsabers forgotten after a battle on one of the planets of the Star Wars galaxy. No, these are samples already collected on Mars, very precisely in the Jezero crater, by Perseverance. Indeed, in the initial objectives of the Mars 2020 mission, which saw the arrival on the red planet of the NASA rover, the collection and return of samples was planned, this part being called Mars Sample Return. 'Martian samples). As for collection, everything is going well…
For collecting Martian samples, Perseverance does the job very well
Everything is perfectly thought out on the Perseverance side. The rover samples rock, regolith (the soil considered the most promising for the search for life) and even air. To date, he has filled dozens of tubes, some preserved and stored within himself, others having been placed on the ground.
In fact, all samples planned for the return mission are doubled for safety. Around ten of these titanium tubes have been waiting since 2023 in the area called Three Forks. Among them, there are eight samples of soil and rocks, one air sample and another serving as a control to check the level of contamination in the other tubes. Moreover, the day these precious samples return to Earth, it will be necessary at all costs to avoid what happened to those of the asteroid Ryugu !
Each tube has its own little name. © NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Mars Sample Return too expensive and too slow according to NASA
It is the mission of recovery and return of samples which poses a problem today, after NASA recognized its wish to revise all its plans. Bill Nelson, the current head of the US space agency, who will leave his post on January 20, said the original plan to return the 30 tubes was “simply unacceptable”. This is not a surprise, the latter having an estimated cost of 11 billion dollars by 2040, in a context where China plans to launch an identical mission around 2028. However, being overtaken by the Middle Kingdom on Mars seems to be the American obsession. A fear that could turn into a main driving force, as in the past with the USSR.
NASA is therefore studying two other plans, the cost of which is currently estimated between 6.6 and 7.7 billion dollars, which would also represent a substantial saving.
A mini-rover released by a flying platform rather than helicopters
Artist's illustration of NASA's well-established “sky crane” system. © NASA / Ashwin R. Vasavada.
The savings in time and money would be partly achieved by reusing better-controlled technology, such as sending a mini-recovery rover, a platform powered by a radioisotope engine rather than solar panels. . The old Mars Sample Return program called for helicopters like Ingenuity. The European agency ESA would still be responsible for the orbiter responsible for bringing the samples back to Earth.
According to Bill Nelson, these new plans would allow a return timetable between 2035 and 2039, but the departing leader warns that the US Congress will have to allocate at least 300 million dollars each year, only for the preparatory stages of this revisited mission.
In October, Donald Trump said he wanted to see Americans on Mars by 2028
Mars represents the ultimate political objective in space, as the Moon was at the end of the 1960s. We know the story: the Americans won this showdown for prestige. Nothing is less certain today, even if Uncle Sam's advance is certain. That said, in 1965, it was the Soviets who were leading the way in space… Last October, Donald Trump, in the middle of the presidential campaign, claimed that with the help of Elon Musk and SpaceX, the United States would arrive on Mars before the end of its mandate in 2028. “Elon promised me he's going to do this, he gargled. He told me we're going to win and he's going to reach Mars by the end of our term, which is a big thing. Before China, before anyone!”
