NASA's Mars Sample Return Program struggles to get off the drawing board

NASA's Office of Inspector General, the agency's auditor, has found that the Mars Sample Return Program is struggling to get off the drawing board, never mind the launchpad. The program (MSR) requires three craft: An Earth Return Orbiter (ERO) that will fly to Mars, and eventually back to Earth; A Sample Retrieval Lander ( …

[Andy The Hat]

Seems a bit short sighted

I could not understand why the designers intentionally collected samples using a rover and left them like breadcrumbs on the surface which necessarily requires a second rover to follow the trail to collect them up for return. The only extra mass to move about is the content of the sample tubes which is not significant. Why not collect, store and recover from the final location of the rover with no requirement for a second rover which would have to travel between 1x and 2x the distance covered by the original ...?

[John Robson]

Re: Seems a bit short sighted

Don't want them to get stuck inside perseverance in case of that rover's failure.

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: Seems a bit short sighted

Perserverance is good at trundling about, selecting interesting samples and putting them in tubes. It was not designed to put tubes in the ascent vehicle because:

*) No-one knows what the ascent vehicle will be and they knew even less where Perserveance was designed.

*) The ascent vehicle will not be allowed to land anywhere near Perserverance. It wii be a long trundle to reach it and another long trundle to retreat to minimum safe distance.

*) As mentioned Perserverance may not be functional when the ascent vehicle arrives.

*) Perserverance could get stuck in a place where it is hard to recover samples.

*) There could be better technology for tube transport available when the ascent vehicle arrives.

That last one may well turn out to be a money saver. Martian helicopters have proved to be more practical than expected.

Two other barriers are the price of heavy launch and the impracticality of the planetary protection protocols. Starship will probably reach orbit real soon now. With propellant transfer it can send a large payload towards Mars. If planetary protection protocols get renegotiated into something practical Starship will be able to crash on Mars. After a few RUDs it will be able to land large payloads on Mars. Eventually it will be able to come back but that will be a long way off. In the mean time, it could deliver a flock of ascent vehicles and a swarm of helicopters.

It really would be worth putting Mars sample return on hold until cheaper general purpose technology is ready rather than designing single use tech compatible with current launch vehicle limitations.

[John Robson]

Re: Seems a bit short sighted

"It really would be worth putting Mars sample return on hold until cheaper general purpose technology is ready rather than designing single use tech compatible with current launch vehicle limitations."

It's certainly worth keeping an eye on starship... but you have to design with what you have, and we *can* do the return without starship.

[Tom Chiverton 1]

Re: Seems a bit short sighted

It would seem NASA can't...

[John Robson]

Re: Seems a bit short sighted

"mostly due to known process problems"

We know that the technology exists, we also know it's not simple.

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: Seems a bit short sighted

"mostly due to known process problems"

We know that the technology exists, we also know it's not simple.

What? Those commie ooropeens use different measurements from us? But we use good ol' Freedom Inches, just like the British Empire used to!

[Spherical Cow]

Re: Seems a bit short sighted

NASA uses metric, because they are serious about science and engineering.

[DS999]

Re: Seems a bit short sighted

The mission would be 10x harder if the rover kept those samples as it drove around, but quit operating before the return mission (which seems likely to be the case at this point) Now you don't have to build a rover to drive around and pick up samples, you have to build a rover that can drive to the stricken rover and get the samples from it. If something had happened like it tumbled down a hillside the door to get at the samples might be inaccessible, or if the samples were hanging on the outside, strewn on a hillside inaccessible to a rover.

[Anonymous Coward]

It always seemed a bit dubious that these samples were going to be collected by "some future technology that we haven't thought about yet".

[werdsmith]

The Sample-Fetch rover was already developed to prototype at Stevenage, but missions plans were revised and it is now looking for an alternative mission.

[Wanting more]

Just drop a transporter pad next to them and send someone through.

[PeterM42]

What would you do with $2.5Bn - $7.4Bn????

I could think of something more useful that collecting a few rocks.

[munnoch]

they likely won't go anywhere in a hurry

Aren't they going to get covered in dust and eventually buried?

Are they left in predictable orientations or will the collection vehicle have to figure out how to pick them up?

Whilst we've landed lots of stuff on Mars, nothing has ever ascended, right? Lot of stuff to figure out methinks.

[PJD]

Commercial contract / X prize

Seems more like a case for a commercial contract or X-prize style thing than an internal NASA project: 'We have x sample tubes weighing Y in these precise locations on Mars. We will pay $n per tube delivered to 300 E St SW Suite 5K39 Washington, DC 20546' where $n is the amount of money NASA feels it can reasonably budget for. The tubes might sit there for a while until someone (space x?) finishes developing the necessary tech to get there and back for a reasonable cost, but they won't be any worse off than they are now and it won't run the risk of sucking up all the available $ and preventing anything else useful from being done by the agency.

[Gene Cash]

50% of the missions don't make it TO Mars...

50% of the missions don't make it TO Mars... and they want to go and come back, which has never been done before

This is HARD and it's going to take a lot of work, so it is not going to be cheap.

That applies for anything, not just collecting samples from Mars. And think about it, we're COLLECTING SAMPLES FROM MARS. This isn't just going down the block to the chemists.

[Tom Chiverton 1]

Re: 50% of the missions don't make it TO Mars...

Are you saying the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one?

[StrangerHereMyself]

Flag waving

I propose a "flag waving" mission where we land, pick up some samples in-situ and launch those into orbit to rendezvous with a Return Orbiter which will transfer the samples to a reentry vehicle and fly back to Earth. This is essentially the same architecture China is using for its Sample Return Mission and has a pretty high probability of success.

The scientific value of such a mission will be much less, but it's either that or spend countless billions (we literally don't know how many at the moment) on getting MSR to the launchpad.

Or defaulting and allowing China to return samples first. I personally don't think this is a big deal since if Musk lands on Mars with Starship he could return literally tons of Martian rocks. The Chinese success would quickly be forgotten.