2024-04-22 11:00:09
NASA announced last week that it was radically overhauling its highly anticipated and troubled mission to bring pieces of Mars back to Earth, a step that experts say is essential to the project’s sustainability. The US space agency said it continues to support Mars Sample Return, but will work to operate the program on modest budgets in the near term, while seeking proposals to design a faster, less expensive mission. expensive. The mission is an ambitious attempt to obtain pristine parts of the Red Planet, which might help scientists determine whether it once harbored life.
But the project’s future has been uncertain since last fall, when an independent review panel issued a dire report saying the mission needed an administrative overhaul because of the risk of cost overruns and delays. According to estimates in a report published in 2020 by the agency, recovering the sample would cost between $3.8 billion and $4.4 billion. The estimated cost over the life of the mission is now between $8.4 billion and $10.9 billion, with samples arriving on Earth in 2040.
That would make the cost of recovering samples from Mars similar to the price of the James Webb Space Telescope, a scientific and engineering marvel that now observes the universe from a solar orbit regarding a million miles from Earth. James Webb took decades to get off the ground and spent more NASA money on scientific research than expected. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at a news conference last week that the estimated sample return date of 2040 was “unacceptable.” He added: “This is the decade of the 21st century in which we will send astronauts to the surface of Mars. It is also unacceptable that the cost reaches $11 billion.” The cost of retrieving a sample from Mars comes at a time when NASA’s science budget is not enough to fund all the telescopes and space probes already implemented or planned. With congressional support for the mission uncertain, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory earlier this year laid off regarding 8 percent of its workforce. However, the Mars sample recovery mission remained the highest priority in the planetary science community’s decadal survey.
But recovering the original Martian remains for laboratory analysis on Earth requires unprecedented technological achievements. NASA and its partners, including the European Space Agency, cannot simply send a spacecraft to the surface of Mars and expect it to reboot and return to Earth. Instead, the mission requires a fleet of spacecraft working as one team. The Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars in 2021, collects and stores samples of Martian rock and soil in Jezero Crater (or Jezero Crater, a crater on Mars), where scientists believe a river flowed in a lake several billion years ago. The rover has separate funding from the sample recovery project. “I think it’s fair to say that we are committed to recovering the specimens that are there,” Nelson said. The original plan called for NASA to send another rover to land on Mars and collect samples from the Perseverance rover. This lander will carry an ascent vehicle that will be launched from Mars and carry samples into orbit. There, the materials will be transferred to another spacecraft, a Mars orbiter created by the European Space Agency, tasked with transporting samples to Earth.
At the news conference, NASA officials called on the scientific community and industry to come up with new ideas using more existing, proven techniques — and perhaps a simpler process — to recover samples. For her part, Nicola Fox, head of NASA’s science department, said during the press conference: “We are studying unconventional capabilities that might return samples sooner and at lower cost. » Bethany Elman, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology and president of the Planetary Society, said: “NASA must find the will to complete the mission that the spacecraft has already started. » She added: “I am confident that we have the technological equipment necessary to collect the returned samples together. » But when we choose to do difficult things, we must decide to do them and overcome the challenges together. “What we need is leadership and commitment to make this happen. »
*American writer
Published by special arrangement with The Washington Post Rental and Syndication Department.
1713787980
#NASA.. #dilemma #bringing #samples #Mars #Earth
