NASA put out the call Monday for ideas to bring back the rocks that the Perseverance rover has been collecting more quickly and cheaply than current plans.
The agency is calling for help from its entire community and anyone else with an idea for a less complicated mission.
A review of the mission last year by an independent review board identified the Mars Sample Return Mission as too costly – as much as $11 billion – and “near zero” possibility of maintaining its launch dates.
While NASA’s mission would have rock samples from the planet brought to Earth by 2040, a Chinese mission to Mars is expected to bring back rocks in 2030, according to state media.
NASA is now looking for “out-of-the-box possibilities,” the agency’s head of science Nicola Fox said Monday. The agency wants to grab the rock samples and bring them here as quickly as possible. The rocks can provide “critical new insights into the origins and evolution of Mars, our solar system and life on Earth,” said Fox.
NASA’s current mission plan is complicated with several vehicles needed to travel, gather the samples, blast off into space again, and deposit the samples into another vehicle before landing on Earth.
Stanford professor G. Scott Hubbard, who once led NASA’s Mars program, told The Washington Post, NASA needs a “magic wand solution.”
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