Perseverance on Mars News: The Rover Samples and Sample Return Mission Rethink

The Mars rover, Perseverance has been collecting samples and dropping them off at designated Jezzero Crater locations. The plan is to collect and process up to 38 collection tubes filling them with Martian rocks and regolith. Collecting the samples has turned out to be the easiest aspect of a mission that was to include a European Space Agency (ESA) lander reaching Mars and touching down near Perseverance. The lander would use a small rover to collect the samples which would then be delivered to it. The lander would incorporate an ascent rocket capable of carrying the samples to Martian orbit and docking with a Return Orbiter which would then bring them back to Earth.

With numerous delays, this Mars Sample Return mission (MSR) has escalated in cost to U.S. $11 billion, and with timeline delays only reaching Earth circa 2040. By that time, other missions on their timelines are likely to land on Mars including the first human crewed ones.

NASA recently under pressure from the U.S. Congress related to escalating costs, decided to alter its original MSR plans. The agency published a request for proposals to collect and return the Perseverance samples at a lower cost and an earlier date. The submissions were received earlier this year and NASA has selected 7 proposals from the following:

• Lockheed Martin
• SpaceX
• Aerojet Rocketdyne
• Blue Origin
• Quantum Space
• Northrop Grumman
• Whittinghill Aerospace

Three of these proposals focus solely on the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) to launch the samples into orbit to rendezvous for the return-to-Earth mission. These have come from Aerojet Rocketdyne, Northrop Grumman and Whittinghill Aerospace. SpaceX has proposed using the Starship for the mission. Blue Origin has proposed a version of the lunar lander that will be featured in a future Artemis mission.

NASA asked for realistic concepts, not necessarily ones that would be cheaper or faster to launch, land, and then return to deliver the samples back to Earth. Since the original MSR plans were being quashed, because they were “a dollar more and a day late,” it seems strange that the agency didn’t specify a lower cost and faster turnaround. The response to NASA’s request will involve each of the submitters to provide an interim and final report. The end goal will be to re-architect the mission with a path forward no later than early next year. Each of the seven will receive U.S. $1.5 million for their reports.

Jeff Gramling, Director of the MSR mission stated that NASA’s purpose was an “opportunity to hear what industry has to tell us…This is the agency wanting to follow through and make sure we haven’t missed anything before we establish the baseline for this mission.” One would assume Gramling wants to see reduced costs and faster timelines as priorities, otherwise, why put a hold on the original plan?

There is another program focused on exploring Mars that will eventually lead to humans landing there. It is the Artemis Program which initially will return human crews to the lunar surface as a prequel to the ultimate goal of sending them to Mars sometime in the 2030s. The return to the Moon through Artemis is not only about establishing a human presence permanently but also about being a proving ground for the technology needed to go to Mars and stay there for at least a month before returning to Earth.

NASA in 2022 unveiled a set of twenty-year objectives involved in sending human crews to Mars. The plan included 50 issues that would need to be addressed. At that time, MSR was still seen as the fastest way to get Martian samples returned to Earth for scientists to study. Now it seems that Perseverance’s sampling efforts may see humans retrieving them instead.

NASA is in a new space race. No longer are the Russians the key competition. China has announced its plans to send taikonauts to the Moon by 2030, and to Mars by 2033.

Then there is SpaceX which was founded by Elon Musk to turn humans into a multiplanetary species. On the SpaceX site, he states:

“You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great – and that’s what being a spacefaring civilization is all about. It’s about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past. And I can’t think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars.”

First, Starships will have to get to Mars where the colonists it brings will use technology to erect a habitat and establish the means to survive with little in the way of receiving continuous support from Earth. That means using Martian local resources from its atmosphere and underground to establish habitability. Eventually, there would be a Martian city that would serve as the launch gateway to the rest of the Solar System and beyond.

When did SpaceX expect to achieve its first Starship landings? Originally Musk wanted to send an unmanned Starship mission to Mars in 2018. Starship wasn’t yet built by then. The timeline got pushed back to 2024 and then 2026 and 2028. Starship just flew its fourth test flight which was suborbital with no humans aboard. It doesn’t seem like it will likely meet the 2026 or 2028 dates for going to Mars.

Looking at the future feasibility of Starship missions to Mars has generated a paper published recently in the journal Nature. It assumes two uncrewed missions bringing essential equipment to Mars in 2027 followed by two crewed missions in 2029. Mars reaches a favourable position for launches from Earth approximately every two years.

After looking at all parameters, the paper concludes “With the information currently available a Mars mission with Starship is not feasible.” It is not feasible for lots of reasons including the risks, costs, resource requirements, and more.

Whether robots collect Perseverance samples or humans on future Mars missions do it, one thing is certain, state actors like China, agencies like NASA and companies like SpaceX intending to go to the Red Planet continue to underestimate the financial and human costs as well as the timelines needed to make a go of it.