Researchers might finally be on track to receive rocks from the red planet — but only if NASA and the European Space Agency can pull off a complex and daring mission.
NASA’s Perseverance rover took a selfie on 22 January as it deposited one of a number of sample tubes on a flat area of Jezero Crater.For decades, scientists who study Mars have watched in envy as spacecraft brought pieces of the Moon, chunks of asteroids and even samples of the solar wind to Earth to be studied. Now some of those researchers might finally be on track to receive rocks from the red planet — but only if NASA and the European Space Agency can pull off a complex and daring mission.
In the coming months, NASA and ESA will have to make crucial decisions about what exactly the mission will look like and how much they think they can spend on it. “We’ve had a lot of questions about containing the cost for Mars sample return,” said Nicola Fox, head of science for NASA, at a 23 March town hall meeting about the agency’s budget. “We are doing a very, very deep dive into [it].”NASA and ESA have agreed on the basic outline of a Mars sample-return mission.
Among the new inventions needed for Mars sample return are the rocket that would be launched from the Martian surface and miniature helicopters with wheels and claw-like grippers. If Perseverance cannot, for some reason, hand samples stored in its belly to NASA’s future lander, the helicopters would be released from the lander and would grab the samples laid down earlier on the ground.