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The UK has announced a new agreement with Airbus that will make it develop a special Mars vehicle for the European Space Agency (ESA). Unlike the two NASA rovers currently operating on Mars, the Airbus rover will be able to send samples to Earth, giving scientists physical access to ground and rock dust from the ground. red planet. This will be the first time that samples of Mars have been delivered on our own planet.
The announcement was made by Sam Gyimah, British Science Minister, who said that Airbus had obtained a GBP 3.9 million contract from ESA. With these funds, Airbus will develop its own Mars rover designed to complement what NASA has started. According to the UK government, this new rover will recover the sample collected by NASA's March 2020 robot and retransfer it into an ascension vehicle.
This vehicle will put the samples into orbit, after which they will be transferred to a spacecraft that will return them to Earth. Currently, NASA operates two robots on Mars called Opportunity and Curiosity. The two robotic vehicles have largely survived their initial missions, after spending years tracking down the red planet to collect data that is returned to researchers. Via these two vehicles, humanity learned a lot about Mars and hinted at its ancient past.
More specific details of the contract, including the commencement of the work and the timing of the eventual launch, have not been revealed. However, it will take a number of years before samples of Mars arrive on Earth. Speaking of the new contract, Gyimah said:
A rover to Mars in 2020 is already under construction by Airbus at Stevenage and the refined knowledge and expertise will now be applied to the design of this new mission, which aims to ensure … for the first time – material to Earth from another planet.
SOURCE: Gov.uk
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