Mars Sample Return Mission [merged and updated]

[Waspie_Dwarf]

NASA Establishes Board to Initially Review Mars Sample Return Plans

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NASA has established a Mars Sample Return Program Independent Review Board to proactively assist with analysis of current plans and goals for one of the most difficult missions humanity has ever undertaken: the return of samples from another planet to study on Earth.

When the Perseverance rover launched to Mars on July 30, it carried with it a sophisticated sampling system with drill bits, a coring arm, and sample tubes that are the cleanest hardware ever sent to space. Perseverance will collect samples from several spots on Mars for return to Earth so scientists can determine if ancient microbial life was ever present on the Red Planet. The independent review board will help NASA review the technical concept developed during preliminary formulation to date for robustness and the ability to satisfy the mission's essential requirements. It will help ensure the agency is adopting lessons learned from its experience with previous large, strategic science missions.

  Read More: NASA/JPL

 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

NASA Awards Mars Ascent Propulsion System Contract for Sample Return

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NASA has awarded the Mars Ascent Propulsion System (MAPS) contract to Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation of Elkton, Maryland, to provide propulsion support and products for spaceflight missions at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Coupled with the successful touchdown of the Mars Perseverance rover, this award moves NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) one step closer to realizing Mars Sample Return (MSR), a highly ambitious planetary exploration program that will build upon decades of science, knowledge, and experience of Mars exploration.  

Read More: NASA

 

[Hyperionxvii]

Great! Oh, wait, it's Maryland? They'll lose it and it will still cost us billions. 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

1 minute ago, Hyperionxvii said:

Great! Oh, wait, it's Maryland? They'll lose it and it will still cost us billions. 

Yes because Grumman famously built the Lunar Module and look what a disaster that was... oh wait, it wasn't.

[Hyperionxvii]

4 minutes ago, Waspie_Dwarf said:

Yes because Grumman famously built the Lunar Module and look what a disaster that was... oh wait, it wasn't.

Well, you might have to be a Murlander to get it. Hopefully, the won't lose it, but its hard to not take a jab at his hopelessly corrupt state. This is not you grandmother's Maryland. 

Edited March 11, 2021 by Hyperionxvii

[Waspie_Dwarf]

NASA to delay Mars Sample Return, switch to dual-lander approach

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NASA plans to delay the next phase of its Mars Sample Return campaign and split a lander mission into two separate spacecraft to reduce the overall risk of the program.

At a March 21 meeting of the National Academies’ Space Studies Board, Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, revealed that NASA and the European Space Agency had agreed to revise the schedule and design for upcoming missions that will return samples being cached by the Perseverance rover to Earth.

Read More: SpaceNews

 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Mars Sample Return cost growth threatens other science missions

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WASHINGTON — NASA’s effort to return samples from Mars is facing increasing costs that is putting pressure not just on other planetary science missions but also a major heliophysics mission.

NASA, in its fiscal year 2024 budget proposal, requested $949.3 million for Mars Sample Return (MSR), the program that will send missions to Mars to take samples collected by the Perseverance rover and return them to Earth. MSR is a joint effort with the European Space Agency, with NASA leading work on a lander and ESA an orbiter.

Read More: SpaceNews

 

Related stories:

 

Edited March 4 by Waspie_Dwarf
topic merged - removed obsolete related stories.

[pellinore]

There were concerns about the cost of the Apollo project to put a man on the moon, half a century ago. Some saw it as having a racist element. Was it worth it? How many people walked on the moon- 12, 20? And how many of their names do we remember? Only the first three, and the crew of Apollo 13. What did we gain?

[khol]

2 hours ago, pellinore said:

What did we gain?

Seriously?..https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/feature/Going_to_the_Moon_Was_Hard_But_the_Benefits_Were_Huge

..and we live in a misguided society when fiscal concerns out wiegh our natural advancement in science..period

Edited March 19, 2023 by khol

[pellinore]

6 hours ago, khol said:

Seriously?..https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/feature/Going_to_the_Moon_Was_Hard_But_the_Benefits_Were_Huge

..and we live in a misguided society when fiscal concerns out wiegh our natural advancement in science..period

I like the idea of space exploration, but cost effectiveness is not a viable argument. Yes, there were technological developments, but who is to say they would not have come about anyway? Fly-by-wire would have been a natural development as technology advanced- bear in mind, this was decades before computers and digital technology was widely available. Now we all have more computing power in our pockets than a NASA spacecraft had then- I we didn't get there because we wanted to go to the moon we got there because corporations had money to invest in the technology.

Space blankets- you think they would not have been developed in the last 50 years? Graphene was discovered a few years ago- nothing to do with NASA.

I've heard the same argument advanced that wars stimulate R&D- no it doesn't, all the available money is spent on developing existing technology to the limit.

 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

NASA to Convene Mars Sample Return Review

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The board, initiated by NASA, will provide added confidence that the program won’t exceed guidelines following an important upcoming milestone.

NASA will convene a Mars Sample Return (MSR) Program independent review board, or IRB, to perform a review of current plans and goals for one of the most difficult missions humanity has ever undertaken: bringing samples from another planet to study on Earth.

Read More: NASA

 

Related stories:

 

Edited March 4 by Waspie_Dwarf
topic merged - removed obsolete related stories.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

The U.S. Senate threatens to cancel Mars Sample Return

The House has yet to weigh in

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The U.S. Senate has thrown down a challenge to NASA’s beleaguered Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign: stay on budget or consider yourself cancelled.

The chamber’s fiscal year 2024 budget for NASA, which passed the appropriations committee on July 13, also proposes to cut up to $522 million from MSR next year. In its explanatory statement, the Senate committee said that if NASA was unable to come up with a plan in six months that would contain MSR to a lifetime cost of $5.3 billion, then the remaining $300 million appropriation would be carved up and fed to other programs, primarily Artemis. Only a token amount would be redirected to other planetary missions.

Read More: The Planetary Society

 

[Piney]

Yet they'll spend money on all kinds of other pure crankery. 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

NASA Mars Ascent Vehicle Continues Progress Toward Mars Sample Return

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NASA’s Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) recently reached some major milestones in support of the Mars Sample Return program. The Mars Ascent Vehicle would be the first launch of a rocket from the surface of another planet. The team developing MAV conducted successful tests of the first and second stage solid rocket motors needed for the launch. 

Mars Sample Return will bring scientifically selected samples to Earth for study using the most sophisticated instrumentation around the world. This strategic partnership with ESA (European Space Agency) features the first mission to return samples from another planet. The samples currently being collected by NASA’s Perseverance Rover during its exploration of an ancient river delta have the potential to reveal the early evolution of Mars, including the potential for ancient life.

Read More: NASA

 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Watch NASA Engineers Put a Mars Lander’s Legs to the Test

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Sturdy legs are needed to absorb the impact of the heaviest spacecraft to ever touch down on the Red Planet.

NASA’s Perseverance rover continues to rack up tubes filled with rock core samples for the planned Mars Sample Return campaign. The joint effort by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) seeks to bring scientifically selected samples back from Mars to be studied on Earth with lab equipment far more complex than could be brought to the Red Planet. Engineers are busy designing the Sample Retrieval Lander that would help bring those samples to Earth. As part of that effort, they’ve been testing prototypes of the lander’s legs and footpads at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

NASA is taking what it has learned over decades of successful Mars landings and applying those lessons to the Sample Retrieval Lander concept, which would be the largest spacecraft yet to land on Mars – as much as 5,016 pounds (2,275 kilograms). Along with relying on next-generation parachutes and 12 rocket engines to slow the spacecraft’s descent to Mars, the lander would need its legs to help absorb the impact of touchdown.

Read More: NASA

 

 

Edited March 4 by Waspie_Dwarf
topic merged - removed obsolete related story.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

NASA Releases Independent Review’s Mars Sample Return Report

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An Independent Review Board (IRB) looked at NASA’s current plans and goals of the first mission to return samples from Mars, and NASA is establishing a team to respond.

In addition to bringing home the first sample collected from Mars, this highly complex mission would include the first launch from the surface of another planet, as well as the first in orbit rendezvous at another planet. Mars Sample Return is a partnership with ESA (European Space Agency).

“NASA has plans for a robust Moon to Mars exploration approach,” said Nicola Fox, NASA’s associate administrator for science. “Mars is rich destination for scientific discovery and understanding the red planet supports the agency’s Artemis program to ultimately send humans to Mars.”

Read More: NASA

 

Edited March 4 by Waspie_Dwarf
topic merged - removed obsolete related stories.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

House bill would fully fund Mars Sample Return, block cooperation on ExoMars

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House appropriators would fully fund NASA’s Mars Sample Return program despite its ongoing problems but halt the agency’s plans to cooperate with a European Mars mission.

House appropriators released this week the report accompanying the commerce, justice and science (CJS) spending bill for fiscal year 2024. That bill, which includes $25.366 billion for NASA, had been in limbo for more than three months, after an appropriations subcommittee marked up the bill in mid-July. The full appropriations committee did not take up the bill at the time nor public the report associated with it, which provides more details on spending levels and policy direction.

Read More: ➡️ SpaceNews

 

[Piney]

"Reduce funding for Earth science and heliophysics" ????????

Yeah because it would be better to be broadsided with a unexpected natural disaster from the weather, geological events or a solar flare......

 

[+Hammerclaw]

NASA was created for political purposes and has been subject to the whim and vagaries of politics, ever since. NASA's purpose, now, is unmanned space exploration. The torch of manned spaceflight has been passed on to the private sector, shining brightest in SpaceX, at this point in time.

Edited November 4, 2023 by Hammerclaw

[+and-then]

7 hours ago, Hammerclaw said:

NASA was created for political purposes and has been subject to the whim and vagaries of politics, ever since. NASA's purpose, now, is unmanned space exploration. The torch of manned spaceflight has been passed on to the private sector, shining brightest in SpaceX, at this point in time.

Yeah, and that money is better spent to buy votes.

[Tatetopa]

On 11/4/2023 at 7:00 AM, Hammerclaw said:

NASA was created for political purposes and has been subject to the whim and vagaries of politics, ever since. NASA's purpose, now, is unmanned space exploration. The torch of manned spaceflight has been passed on to the private sector, shining brightest in SpaceX, at this point in time.

Absolutely!  The private sector has proven very successful at owning the bulk of the wealth and property on earth.  They should control humanity's access to the rest of the solar system.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

On 11/4/2023 at 2:00 PM, Hammerclaw said:

NASA was created for political purposes and has been subject to the whim and vagaries of politics, ever since. NASA's purpose, now, is unmanned space exploration. The torch of manned spaceflight has been passed on to the private sector, shining brightest in SpaceX, at this point in time.

This is rather an over simplification of the case. NASA is still the global leader in crewed exploration of space, as shown by the recent flight of a crew-capable Orion spacecraft around the moon and the selection of a NASA crew for the first crewed mission to deep space since 1972.

So far SpaceX capsules have launched 11 crews into space, only one of those missions wasn't to the International Space Station. One demonstration flight and seven subsequent flights were part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. Two flights were to the International Space Space Station as part of Axiom Space's private astronaut program... a program encouraged by,and approved by, NASA. The one remaining mission was the Inspiration4 mission, a private spaceflight paid for by the billionaire Jared Isaacman. Whilst all of these missions have used SpaceX launch vehicles and capsules none of them have been SpaceX led missions.

SpaceX provides an important service, but it is as a taxi service not as a space exploration service. The development of the Crew Dragon (and Cargo Dragon) spacecraft were paid for by NASA as was a fair amount of the Falcon 9 spacecraft.

The press loves to call these missions "SpaceX missions" but that is akin to calling the Apollo 11 landing a "Grumman Aerospace mission".

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I feel very strongly that SpaceX would not have been able to get started, nor would we have made the progress that we have, without the help of NASA.

- Elon Musk

[+Hammerclaw]

2 hours ago, Waspie_Dwarf said:

This is rather an over simplification of the case. NASA is still the global leader in crewed exploration of space, as shown by the recent flight of a crew-capable Orion spacecraft around the moon and the selection of a NASA crew for the first crewed mission to deep space since 1972.

So far SpaceX capsules have launched 11 crews into space, only one of those missions wasn't to the International Space Station. One demonstration flight and seven subsequent flights were part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. Two flights were to the International Space Space Station as part of Axiom Space's private astronaut program... a program encouraged by,and approved by, NASA. The one remaining mission was the Inspiration4 mission, a private spaceflight paid for by the billionaire Jared Isaacman. Whilst all of these missions have used SpaceX launch vehicles and capsules none of them have been SpaceX led missions.

SpaceX provides an important service, but it is as a taxi service not as a space exploration service. The development of the Crew Dragon (and Cargo Dragon) spacecraft were paid for by NASA as was a fair amount of the Falcon 9 spacecraft.

The press loves to call these missions "SpaceX missions" but that is akin to calling the Apollo 11 landing a "Grumman Aerospace mission".

- Elon Musk

Or the Boeing Starliner the Boeing Starliner? NASA gave up on deep space manned exploration when it traded the Saturn 5 for the Space Shuttle and a moon base for the ISS. Their new capsule has problems, but nothing compared to the farcical Starliner. Real, sustained manned space exploration can't survive on throw-away spacecraft and fickle politicians. SpaceX is developing the largest, most sophisticated, reusable manned deep space exploration spacecraft in history which you conveniently ignore. 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

2 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

Or the Boeing Starliner the Boeing Starliner?

What about it? Developed under the same type of fixed price contract as Crew Dragon. If you think that Crew Dragon is perfect and Starliner is a disaster then you fail to understand both. The reality is that whilst Starliner is much worse (so far than) Crew Dragon, the SpaceX capsule has been far from flawless. The Commercial Crew Program was supposed to be launch astronauts to the ISS by 2017, SpaceX didn't achieve this until 2020... 3 years behind schedule. After the first uncrewed flight of a Crew Dragon spacecraft SpaceX carried out a test of the capsule's launch abort system... there was an explosion which destroyed the capsule and would have killed any crew members on board. The Crew Dragon was supposed to be to return to the ground using propulsive landing, SpaceX had to abandon that and now it requires an expensive sea recovery like Apollo did (Starliner toches down on solid ground)  For sure (if you ignore the occasional leaking toilets) then the Crew Dragon is now a success, but it had a difficult birth. Starliner has had an even more difficult birth, bit that does not meant that Boeing won't be able to make a success of it eventually. Either way any excess costs are carried by Boeing, not the U.S. tax payer. Not that any of this is relevant to your incorrect assertion that:

 

On 11/4/2023 at 2:00 PM, Hammerclaw said:

The torch of manned spaceflight has been passed on to the private sector

It hasn't, it's still very much in NASA's hands.

 

23 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

NASA gave up on deep space manned exploration when it traded the Saturn 5 for the Space Shuttle and a moon base for the ISS.

You are laughably out of date... six years out of date to be precise. There's this programme NASA has called Artemis. Practically everyone (except you apparently) has heard of it. It's goal is to return astronauts to the moon and then take them on to Mars... that is deep space crewed exploration (the term "manned exploration" is even more out of date than the rest of your misinformation). Artemis formally began in 2017 and has already resulted in 2 successful flights of an Orion space capsule and 1 successful flight of the Space Launch System... currently the most powerful successful launch vehicle in the world.

 

32 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

SpaceX is developing the largest, most sophisticated, reusable manned deep space exploration spacecraft in history which you conveniently ignore. 

I didn't conveniently ignore anything, that's your M.O., not mine. SpaceX hopes, one day, to use Starship to colonise Mars, NOT for the scientific exploration of the planet, but to take fare-paying pioneers to the Red planet (no doubt for a profit) NOT to advance human knowledge but to fulfil Elon Musk's Messianic delusions. And, to inject some actual facts here (those things you like to ignore) which deep space exploration missions is SpaceX currently planning for Starship? Well there is the dearMoon mission, which is to send a crew of 9 on a tourism flight around the moon. So is that a SpaceX mission? No, it's being paid for by the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. Then there is the Lunar Starship, designed to land astronauts on the moon. Is that a SpaceX mission? No, that's led by, and paid for by NASA... you know the organisation you have repeatedly claimed no longer take part in crewed space exploration.

SpaceX is a vital component of the exploration of space, but it is not the driving force. The amount of space exploration actually carried out by SpaceX is exactly zero.

The reality is that you lack almost any understanding of the roles of NASA and private companies in the current exploration of space.

[Eldorado]

Nasa’s hunt for signs of life on Mars divides experts as mission costs rocket

“The Mars Sample Return was established with unrealistic budget expectations,” says the panel’s report. “There is currently no credible, congruent technical, nor properly margined schedule, cost and technical baselines that can be accomplished with the likely available funding.” In fact, there is “near zero probability” of Nasa’s plan succeeding on its current budget, the board concluded.

To the fury of a number of space scientists, the mission’s spiralling costs are already playing a part in the postponement of other Nasa-funded projects. These include Veritas, a mission to study Venus to discover why this searingly hot planet lost its potential to be a habitable world.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/nov/12/experts-split-over-nasa-mission-to-mars-costs-rocket