NASA details totally doable, not science fiction plan for sending Mars rocks to Earth A sample depot will be set up on Mars for NASA's Perseverance rover to stash Martian rock and gas specimens ahead of a lander arriving to return the material to Earth sometime in the 2030s ... hopefully. Perseverance, sent to the Red Planet to hunt for signs of ancient microbial life, has been roaming the Jezero Crater and …
The difficulties in landing anything on Mars is demonstrably non-negligeable - and that is just for stuff that was never meant to take off and come back.
This time, they want to send a robot that not only has to land intact, but must also rejoin the rover, extract the sample tubes, store them safely, and then take off and come back to Earth.
And all of that, practically on its own.
The difficulty of this mission is exponentially higher. If the engineers manage to pull this off, that will be one hell of a feather in their cap.
The people that deal with space have been able to pull off a number of remarkable feats of late. Landing a device on a spinning rock and bringing back samples, launching the mother of all telescopes and see it actually work as planned, hitting a rock gazillions of miles away to see if they could change its path - I for one have confidence that they will be able to come up with something that works.
And if it fails they'll do it again with lessons learned.
In between all the idiotic events, let's not forget that we can also do amazing things.
But international cooperation on an out-of-this-world project will surely foster international relationships. OK, it's USA and Europe in this instance and we're fairly close anyway, but this sort of thing will reinforce that relationship (and potentially intimidate rivals)
Space programs have consistently used tiny percentages of the world's spending annually. The US, far and away the biggest space spender, still puts over $150 of federal money into helping people on Earth for every $1 spent on NASA. Picking on NASA as your source of funds for solving hunger, poverty, housing, and healthcare is equivalent to rooting around in the federal couch for loose pennies.
To put it another way: suggesting liquidating space spending to fix problems on Earth shows you're not actually looking at government budgets like a voter should, but rather looking at memes from teh interwebs.
"suggesting liquidating space spending to fix problems on Earth shows you're not actually looking at government budgets like a voter "
The sorts of problems that NASA works to solve are often directly applicable to issues on Earth. There is an enormous amount of technology spun off each year. The patent holder for solar roof tiles isn't Elon, it's NASA, although the patent expired some years ago.
Just to be that guy, WELL AHHCHKTUALLY, they no longer plan to send a rover but now not one but two helicopters intended to provide backup capability to recover the tubes and carry them to the lander, which will then load them into the ascend module, which will in turn dock to an orbiting return module where the sample tubes get transferred from the ascend module to the return module, after which the return module departs to earth (This complicated "pass the parcel" chain is so that nothing that touched the surface of mars gets brought back to earth outside the sample capsule, just in case there IS life on Mars and it's hostile to humans. Viral or bacterial life is the big threat there). The primary method for returning sample tubes to the lander will be Percy itself. If Perseverance is somehow unable to perform the function then the helicopters will be used. The tubes the helicopters would recover are the ones left behind on the surface by Perseverance as it sampled different sites. They would explicitly not be able to retrieve the sample tubes retained on-board the rover. (Current WOW is that they take 2 samples at each location, with one sample tube being left behind and one retained aboard the rover.
You'd think they'd actually test this in lunar orbit first... where it's cheaper and easier to send down some landers to test with. Yes, it's a totally different and more severe environment than mars, but it's simpler and less time consuming to test there and make sure the rendevous and transfer parts actually work properly. In any case, it will be a fun and interesting mission to watch!
l8gravely,
I don't think the Moon is all that useful as a test bet. As well as being much more expensive than doing multiple testing on Earth.
The most dangerous part is the landing, which can't be easily simulated anywhere. Though we've tested Mars parachutes at very high altitudes on Earth.
Obviously you can't test a helicopter on the Moon.
And Moon gravity is too low, with Earth's too high, but Mars has an atmosphere that the Moon doesn't. Again with Earth's being too thick, though it's not hard to test in a low pressure chamber.
Building a whole new replica rover and launching it to the Moon to test the sample transfer process seems like a really expensive way to do a test that's as different to the conditions on Mars as Earth is.
"You'd think they'd actually test this in lunar orbit first"
It's not really cheaper. Weird as it sounds, the cost of going all the way to Mars isn't much more expensive than doing a lunar orbit project and there's the same amount of ability to recover from serious problems, zero. To test on Luna and then send something to Mars just doubles the cost.
LOST ON the back pages of the US Media.... China put an orbiter around the moon. It launched a mining vehicle to the moon which filled its body with lunar rocks then joined with the orbiter transferring the cargo. The orbiter then fired its rocket and headed back to earth, chock full of moon rocks.
This was the prototype. Miners and orbiters. The Miners can leave their rocks off at the orbiter, refuel and head back to the moon for more rocks. The CHINER plan can include a dozen orbiters and hundreds of miners. The orbiters BTW map the surface and target the miners where they want them.
The gravity of the moon is just 17% of the earth, Mars is 38% of the earth's gravity. The miners would need more fuel to rejoin the orbiter on Mars.
NASA's plan... the BILL NESLON, Deliverance Kid all growed up... plan is to have the ROVER be the miner then load a NASA Rocket with tubes of rock. Then the rocket takes off and heads to earth. In this SCHEME you have a few problems... Where do you land the rocket? NASA has yet to land a rocket in reverse which BEZOS and Musk seem to have accomplished. Musk landed a rocket on a floating barge. But they have never landed and taken off again.
The Rover must somehow load the glass tubes into the rocket. Depending on the orbits of the earth and Mars, the delay is 5 to 25 minutes roughly for radio signals. This could be made into a comedy as the Rover struggles to place the glass tubes into the rocket, breaking the glass tubes with each 10 minute adjustment until it finally manages to push the rocket over to the Mars surface.
Next when does the Rocket launch? God forbid the rover has its arm stuck in the door of the rocket. The Hohmann transfer orbits are synodic periods and for Mars to earth, the period is 780 days plus the 8 months trip back to earth. Round the whole mess off to three years. By then the ROVER batteries will be DEAD.
Yeah, the NASA plan is crazy but not crazy enough to work. For a handful of glass tubes, it is exactly what you might expect from the AMTRAK of SPACE, NASA. But is the plan crazy enough to stiff the Taxpayer? Sure, they will buy anything... just claim it is all for National Security.
LONG LIVE MY OBEDIENCE AND LOYALTY TO Commander Heelspurs's US SPACE FARCE...
"By then the ROVER batteries will be DEAD." See mention of 17 years.
BTW: negative spew attracts negative reviews
Yeah and Joe Biden Batteries will last ten years and Solar cells will last 25 years and LED bulbs 70000 hours and wind generators 25 years...
Sales Brochures... is that where you get your "FACTS"... Average like expectancy of a wind generator in Germany was five years before a major overhaul. Solar Cells deplete 30% in Five years.
What the hell does Joe Biden have to do with batteries?
The batteries in the Vikings are still working (if somewhat depleted) after over 45 years. I'm pretty sure NASA still knows how to make long-lasting batteries for this kind of thing.
Methinks you should stop watching that side of You Tube. Rots the brain, it does.
The Rover must somehow load the glass tubes into the rocket. Depending on the orbits of the earth and Mars, the delay is 5 to 25 minutes roughly for radio signals. This could be made into a comedy as the Rover struggles to place the glass tubes into the rocket, breaking the glass tubes with each 10 minute adjustment until it finally manages to push the rocket over to the Mars surface.
Wait, you're actually thinking they're controlling these devices interactively?
From which planet do you yield?
You do little more than rant, but if you think for a minute that the Rover and the Rocket will be acting autonomously while everyone is cozy sleeping at night, perhaps you should take a lesson from Tesla autonomous driving cars, where the passenger in the driver's seat passively observes the Tesla causing another fatality... There will be intervention just as pilots intervened albeit unsuccessfully with the 737 Max-falling-rocks when on autopilot.
The rover is a toy and nothing more, than an expensive toy. You talk of the great achievements of hitting moving objects. It is Newtonian. We were doing those celestial body maths problems in the Sixth Form. NASA made the unsubstantiated claim they moved the asteroid 1 Degree. Not a single scrap of supporting evidence. But they claim they will study the space telescope data. To talk before one has a single fact. That's quite the American Trait, isn't it?
I promise Mr Vendetta that engineers will have manual control over the devices. And when they do intervene, that will be just one more thing NASA can crow about. Ironic though I never hear NASA crowing about the Teacher in space or the flying heat tiles over Texas fiasco. The crew could not repair a single tile in orbit. There was no backup plan, no backup ship, no spare tiles no tools no adhesives... Just a doomed crew who knew they would die on reentry. O-rings that freeze and you launch in a freeze. No ability to repair tiles in space. Seat of the pants negligence.
The $10 billion dollar Webb telescope just had a cold camera failure of the MIRI. And the 10 Billion dollar scope is relatively new and this has reduced its capacity. All of your little NASA miracles have little bugs chewing.
"You do little more than rant, but if you think for a minute that the Rover and the Rocket will be acting autonomously while everyone is cozy sleeping at night, perhaps you should take a lesson from Tesla autonomous driving cars,"
Pretty much all Mars rovers since the cutest of them (Sojourner) have been to a large degree "autonomous" (pre-programmed asynchronous control is probably a better name for it). For early rovers it was mostly a sequence of commands boiling down to "Turn X degrees, drive forwards Y meters, turn Z degrees take photo" which were sent to the rover, then waiting for the results to come back in, spend the rest of the day deciding how to move next and making a command sequence for it, then at the end of the day upload the command sequence, and overnight the data for the result would be received and the next day they could analyse, make a new sequence, send that, wait for results, analyse those, send a new command sequence and go home, repeat ad nauseam.
For newer rovers there's more autonomy, and commands from earth are more along the lines of "drive to this location, preferably along this route". The onboard navigation systems then mostly follow the route but will make autonomous (without human intervention) small course corrections to steer around larger rocks and gullies to prevent wheel damage and optimize travel time.
The claims about moving Dimorphos' orbit around Didymos are very well substantiated and there's plenty of data out there if you care to look. A lot of the data doesn't even come from NASA but from observatories (both optical and radar/radio) in multiple countries. Proving an orbit changed is rather simple. If you know the orbit (and we did) then you can easily predict where something should be after a certain amount of time has passed. If you take a photo after exactly one orbital period (barring some precession wobble and such) the object will be in exactly the same spot around the parent object. When that lines up well for all shots pre impact you know you have a good fix on the orrbit. Post impact the object suddenly isn't where you know it should be based on it's previous orbit. In other words, it's orbit has shifted.
As to the whole space shuttle debacle, that's a discussion in itself and one we can't blame ONLY on NASA.But that requires so much history and program knowledge I'm not going to bother.
and take off again,
And a few times more.
And with a more delicate and difficult payload.
Batteries with a 3 year shelf life are no trouble, even without panels or Pu.
The article mentions the Mars return vehicle in orbit, awaiting rendezvous with the Mars to orbit launcher.
You should think better, rant less.
Not even close to what Bezos and Musk have done. Real rockets up from the Earth and down on the earth in Reverse. But I expect you knew exactly what I was talking about, so you resorted to the Toys and the 17% gravity of the Moon. Don't play if you have to cheat. Musk landed in reverse on a barge. A full sized rocket. NASA never done dooed that...
Uhmmm, the friggin rocket sky-crane lowering the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers wasn't hard or real? Excuse me???? Do you even begin to grasp just how hard control of a pendulum weight on a long cable below a vehicle like that is? Makes Musks rockets look like childs play.
NASA never did vertical landing because it's never been in a position to really take it on. EVERYTHING NASA does is decided for them by funding and thus by Congress. NASA didn't really want the Space Shuttle as it was eventually designed but they had to make do. NASA didn't want the Orion program, but it had to make do, NASA doesn't really want the SLS, but it has to make do. This constant battle over securing funds as also led to it's gargantuan bureaucracy and failed to properly take on projects like the DC-X. Private enterprise developing solutions like the Falcon 9 is probably the more efficient solution to this problem anyway.
Your rant never said anything about the size of the NASA rocket.
NASA has yet to land a rocket in reverse which BEZOS and Musk seem to have accomplished. Musk landed a rocket on a floating barge. But they have never landed and taken off again.
But instead of accepting your original lack of clarity, you double down. Accuracy matters.
Also Bezos (oh sorry) BEZOS hasn't achieved orbit yet. So while he's done landing on his rocket he's only done it from balistic velocities.
Musk and SpaceX on the other hand are the real deal.
Oh and NASA have definitely landed and taken off again. I saw that footage of Buzz Aldrin punching an idiot in the face again the other day, and if NASA hadn't been able to - his corpse would still have been sitting on the lunar surface.
NASA never done dooed that...
Correct, because NASA doesn't build rockets. NASA didn't build the Redstone rocket (from Chrysler Aerospace) that carried Alan Shepard (in a McDonnel-built Mercury capsule) on a suborbital flight. NASA didn't build the Saturn V (Boeing, North American, Douglas), the Apollo capsule (North American), or Apollo LM (Grumman). NASA didn't build the Rockwell International space shuttle, the Lockheed external tank, or the Morton-Thiokol solid boosters. NASA did, however, pay for their development.
Just like NASA has pumped a fortune into SpaceX's development efforts. SpaceX was broke after all the Falcon 1 failures. Falcon 9 was a pipe dream without outside funding, and NASA stepped up with juicy contracts for Falcon 9 launches, resupply and crew delivery contracts, and flew Dragon automated docking hardware on some of the final shuttle missions. As SpaceX CEO Shotwell has said repeatedly, SpaceX's existence and success was due to NASA's money.
People give a lot of credit to NASA for the moon landings, visiting Mars, and other feats of rocketry, but those efforts depend on the engineers and researchers of numerous private contractors. SpaceX is just the latest of many NASA contractors and it is WEIRD that people treat SpaceX as somehow different than the ones before it, or think that NASA is trying to compete with SpaceX.
NASA doesn't build rockets. It hires companies to do that for it, like its current fair-haired contractor SpaceX.
Mining the moon is largely pointless. There's currently nothing up there that we need and can't get cheaper and easier here on earth (Earth and Moon share pretty much the same mineral composition. And don't say Helium-3 because we can't actually do anything with it here and won't be able to for at least another decade, probably even longer. First we'd need to get Deuterium-Tritium fusion working. After that we can start trying MAYBE to get up to helium fusion temperatures but we're a VERY long way from achieving that).
The Rover is using a Plutonium power cell, we know exactly how long it's going to live based on the half life of plutonium and previous experience with RTGs (The Voyager probes and the curiosity rover being notable ones).
The sample tubes are not glass, they are titanium (Grade 5 iirc) with gripping and locking provisions designed in. Loading and unloading these will be almost entirely autonomous and certainly none of it will be manually controlled. There would be no human intervention anywhere in the process as the time delay simply doesn't allow for it. Of course a way for the robot to align to the lander and an allowance for minor misalignment is designed into the system. None of that is particularly hard to solve. Getting there safely and dealing with the dust will be the biggest challenges
If you're going to spout bullshit, read up on what you're spouting bullshit about.
"There's currently nothing up there that we need and can't get cheaper and easier here on earth"
There is a whole lot that can be done on the moon that can't be done on Earth. A real biggy is putting people on the moon for an extended period to evaluate the health effects of reduced gravity. There's speculation that crystal growth on the moon might lead to advancements in semi-conductors. Working in zero G has lead to some interesting results, but it also leads to an huge number of problems. Another great thing to put on the moon is virus research.
"NASA has yet to land a rocket in reverse which BEZOS and Musk seem to have accomplished."
Long before Muck and Bezos, NASA was landing rockets. The computing power during the Apollo missions wasn't there to automatically land the astronauts and there also wasn't a way to scan the terrain for the best spot, but the Cambell's soup can of a lander did land under rocket power and take off again. Several other programs such as DC-X did work on VTVL rocket systems and several other small aerospace firms demonstrated landing rockets long before Elon and Jeff. The big launch companies could have done it, but felt the costs and risks associated with reusability were too high.
Of course, there's a reasonable chance this whole cockamamie scheme will be overtaken by events, and never happen.
The event by which they'd be overtaken would, of course, be Elon (or a crew member) driving up to the sample dump in their Tesla Mars rover, grabbing the samples, driving back to one of the landed Starships, and adding these miserable few kg to the couple of hundred the crew have gathered, then sending the whole lot back to Earth.
The crew wouldn't be going back to Earth: they're colonists, not 'footprints & flags' explorers
This is NASA and Musk.
They will both be far behind their claimed schedules.
So I agree that SpaceX isn't going to get boots on Mars for 10 years, but I don't think NASA will return the samples in that timeframe either.
So it is absolutely possible that a manned SpaceX mission is the fastest way to get the samples back.
(I'm ignoring the colonisation part - that is 100 years away if it ever happens. Before anyone could permanently move to Mars, we need 50 years of experience running a Mars base. And we need 50 years of experience building, extending and maintaining it. And 50 years experience of people living there long term. All of those can happen mostly at the same time, so only 50-60 years from starting construction. But we are 10-20 years from a manned Mars mission, and probably need another 20-30 years from that to the start of construction on Mars).
Before anyone could permanently move to Mars, we need 50 years of experience running a Mars base. And we need 50 years of experience building, extending and maintaining it. And 50 years experience of people living there long term.
We'd also need a damn good reason for colonising the place, rather than (say) Siberia and Antarctica, both of which are nearer and easier.
Theoretically it makes sense to colonize somewhere off world, as insurance in case a giant asteroid hits (or far more likely we do something really stupid with nuclear or biological weapons)
But not until that place can operate 100% self sufficiently forever, in case no help will be coming from Earth, ever.
The best location to start such a colony, by far, is the Moon not Mars. It is far closer in terms of travel time and communication delay, which is important for the first few decades/centuries when it will absolutely NOT be capable of eternal self sufficiency. Any disaster big enough to not only take out Earth but also a lunar colony would also take out a Martian colony.
If I die, my children die, all my friends die, my whole society dies,
then no, I see nothing to gain from a mars toehold for Elon and the Boys from Brazil.
It is far more important to me that other species that live around me and I am fond of, do not go extinct, here, now, than a tiny remanent of humanity survives for a while longer.
It is an entertainment and a fantasy, but in a practical sense a waste. That's fine for some small amount of resource, but as the kind of major undertaking to get up to even the tiniest chance of success, it is a fools errand. The mere existence distracts from the real existential threats we all face, and are way, way, under preparing to deal with.
The survival of the human race is decided here, not on mars.
The smartest minds, and the R&D capital of the West is being expended on frippery.
Unlikely to ever come to pass, as the challenges are literally "out of this world". As Larry Niven said way back in the '60s "the more you control your environment the more dangerous it becomes to live in it".
We commonly ignore the extent to which even the most urbanised folks depend unwittingly but utterly on the natural environment around them for survival. Nothing comparable exists on Mars, so life will literally hang by a thread. Consequently, high risk temporary stations may be feasible but permanent self-sustaining colonies probably not.
> "I'm ignoring the colonisation part - that is 100 years away if it ever happens. ... And 50 years experience of people living there long term."
Where do you draw the distinction between "living there long term" and "colonisation" ? Especially given the likelihood of people not returning to Earth (it'd be hugely expensive and largely unnecessary)
Why would coming home from Mars be that expensive?
If we're sending people, we're doing it by ship. That ship is presumably coming back to Earth. So the only cost is the return trip from Mars to that ship.
For a colony on Mars to survive it's going to need to be able to produce fuel. And it's unlikely it's going to be using single-use spacecraft.
Some people might be willing to make their move to Mars a one-way trip. But probably not all.
Also there are loads of problems to solve first. Like radiation shielding. Both in transit, and then on Mars - given its lack of magnetic field.
"And it's unlikely it's going to be using single-use spacecraft."
The plan might be something reusable, but something might happen. There would need to be a completely spare rocket or 3 to steal parts from and all of the tools on hand to make repairs as well as whatever material handling equipment that could be necessary. If an engine needs to be swapped, it's still going to require equipment to do the removals and replacements along with whatever is needed to test for leaks or other things once the swap is complete.
There are endless problems that need to be sorted before there can be a manned mission to Mars. So far, Elon is only working on a rocket and everyone of them has crashed/exploded except one. He's a bit shorter on funds after this past week so SpaceX might have to slow down on development although they are betting the company on Starship at this point and the Raptor engines aren't passing qualification checks at much of a pace. The massive flash of green flames makes for good video, though.
"Before anyone could permanently move to Mars, we need 50 years of experience running a Mars base."
A bigger problem to solve is where to get Nitrogen to ship to Mars. There will be no growing of food there without bringing some in and it's also needed to bulk up the air supply in human occupied areas so they aren't running nearly 100% O2. The Apollo 1 tragedy is a good example of why it's very bad to have a 100% oxygen atmosphere. NASA was thinking that it would be so much easier to only need to seal the capsule if the pressure was 5.5psi which is enough to push oxygen into the hoomans.
While there is verified sources of water on Mars, the mining and purification will be a big operation. Total life support for any extended stay on Mars will require an enormous amount of mechanical pre-supply. Even those that talk about 3D printing everything never seem to see that it would take a bunch of equipment and energy to make the feedstocks to supply the 3D printers. They don't work on random regolith.
> stick them in the US postal system
where, upon their return, they will get stuck in US Customs for years, while various parties wrangle about how much and who should pay, the import duty.
That is, provided the postage was sufficient. Otherwise the USPS might just return them to the sender.
It would probably be better / easier / cheaper to send a science lab to Mars and analyse all the samples in situ.
"It would probably be better / easier / cheaper to send a science lab to Mars and analyse all the samples in situ."
That's a big discussion when experiments are being evaluated to go on the rovers. They can't pack the whole lab and if they tried, they'd still wind up needing the analyzer they didn't bring with Murphy being such a bastard and all.
If they can get sample back to Earth, it just a matter of who gets dibs on the most expense material ever collected.
There are Apollo era moon rocks still under seal. With changing technology, they have wanted to have untouched samples available if there comes a time when a new machine might be just the thing to get answers for some burning questions.
Has anything Musk predicted ever come true in the time span he stated it would happen? Me thinks not.
Starship may or may not reach orbit in the next couple of years, but SpaceX sending a human landing party to Mars before 2030 is very unlikely.
Has anything Musk predicted ever come true in the time span he stated it would happen? Me thinks not.
Indeed, and just when failure is becoming clear on Projectn he announces an equally fanciful Projectn+1 to distract the fanboiz and keep the adulation flowing.
"Indeed, and just when failure is becoming clear on Projectn he announces an equally fanciful Projectn+1 to distract the fanboiz and keep the adulation flowing."
He does that a lot to distract from bad news so it breaks the news cycle. I think he keeps a list of off-the-wall stuff on tap to trot out when he needs a distraction.
I'm a little surprised that, having gone to the trouble of taking two samples at each location and caching one of each at the depot in case of problems retrieving the ones kept on the rover, it sounds like they're going to put both sets of samples on the same return craft. OK, they can get twice as much material back in one go but if the ascent to Martian orbit, capture by the orbiting return stage, transfer to Earth orbit or descent to Earth surface goes wrong, they lose both sets.
I guess they've done the maths and decided that the chance of something going wrong during any of these (really hard-sounding but probably quite run-of-the-mill for NASA) operations is much lower than the chance of a problem with transferring samples from the rover (which sounds really simple but is probably filed under "never attempted before").
Personally I'd go for the rover samples. If that fails, then use back-up helicopter from cache mode. That way, if it all works as planned there'll be one sample on the return rocket and one left on Mars, in case that suffers a failure.
But then the highest risk might be considered to be the failure to get funding for a second sample-return mission. So what's the point. We know how to get more samples now anyway. And I believe there are plans for more rovers in future.
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