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NASA and the European Space Agency, a NASA and a European Space Agency, which is one of the world's largest and most important research projects. Pair of rocket launches as soon as 2026.
The Mars sample return mission, if approved, would pick up rock and soil samples by NASA's March 2020 rover set for launch next year. The specimens would come back to Earth for detailed analysis in terrestrial laboratories, yielding results that scientists would like to paint a picture of the Martian environment – today and in the future – with one-way robotic missions.
A preliminary signal of support for this year came in the White House's fiscal year 2020 budget request, which proposed $ 109 million for NASA to work on future Mars missions, including a sample return. That's after NASA received $ 50 million to study the sample return effort in 2019.
"The 2020 budget, the President's recommended budget," said Mars, "we're working on this," said Lori Glaze, director of NASA's planetary science division, in a presentation. Sept. 10 to the National Academies Committee on Astrobiology Planetary Sciences. "We do not know the status quo of what we are doing because we have so much appropriations, but we are hopeful that there will be some appropriations so we can move on this activity."
NASA unveiled a strategy to pursue a "lean" lower-cost March sample return mission in 2017, a Glaze plan said it would allow scientists to get their hands on the Martian surface as soon as possible.
But even a lean Mars sample return mission will cost trillions of dollars.
When asked at the Sept. 10 meeting, Glaze said NASA's cost estimate for a sample return mission is "still pretty rough at this point" and she said she was reticent to give a specific number.
"Keep in mind, we're looking at a collaborative approach, which helps," she said. "It's in the $ 2.5 to $ 3 billion (range). And that number is for the U.S. side, the launch of the lander, it does not include the fetch rover, that's ESA-provided. On the Earth Return Orbiter, it's ESA-provided, but it carries a U.S. payload capture system and re-entry system. "
Senior NASA Leaders in the United States of America, United States, United States, United States, United States, NASA centers, Glaze said.
NASA and ESA signed a "statement of intent" in April 2018
"Just a couple of months ago, at NASA, we conducted what is called an acquisition strategy meeting, which is at the highest levels within NASA, where we discuss and get approval for various partnerships, not only with the international partners, but also division of labor and work within NASA, "Glaze said.
Officials said multiple NASA centers will have a role in the return, including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Marshall Space Flight Center, the Ames Research Center, and the Langley Research Center. The U.S. contribution to the mission of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and the Johnson Space Center in Houston is home to NASA's sample curation lab.
"There would also be opportunities for commercial participation in various aspects, as well as additional international participation," Glaze said.
"Hopefully, by the end of the calendar year, we will know what the congressional appropriation is for NASA," said Glaze. "And also, in November, ESA has their ministerial meeting coming up, where they hopefully get permission to move on and move forward with their sample."
The meeting of European government ministers, set for Nov. 27-28 in Seville, Spain, will be approved for ESA programs over the next few years. Among other space research projects, ESA will propose to government ministers a budget to kick-start development of the European elements of a Mars sample return mission.
Mars sample return missions have been studied for decades, but the concepts have never moved into full-scale development.
"Finding an affordable solution is going to be one of those things," said Jim Watzin, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters.
Beyond any funding provided by Congress in NASA's 2020 budget, agency officials hope for a firmer commitment to the Trump administration in the White House's fiscal year 2021 budget request, potentially including authority to officially kick off full-scale development.
"The president will submit his budget request for fiscal year '21, typically in the February timeframe, and that's when we would hear whether or not the administration has made the decision to support a sample return, and in what timeframe from a budgetary perspective," Watzin said.
NASA officials describe the return campaign as a "campaign" campaign, which is one of the most important events in the world, with the launch of the March 2020 rover from Cape Canaveral on top of the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket.
The Mars 2020 rover will land on the Red Planet in February 2021 at Jezero Crater, the location of an ancient dried-up river where water and sediment flowed into a basin billions of years ago.
The sophisticated rover carries its own miniature laboratory, with the tools to study Martian geology and research for organic molecules. It also carries a weather station, a ground-penetrating radar and a technology demonstration payload to the carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere into oxygen, a pathfinder for human explorers to live off the land.
But a primary goal of the March 2020 rover will be to collect up to 43 hermetic-sealed tubes of drilled core samples from Martian rocks. Some of the tubes, each about the size of a pencil, will be retrieved by a fetch rover launched in the next phase of the Mars sample return campaign.
"The studies have been made to make a decision about the end of 2019, and from my perspective, this is huge progress," Watzin said. "I think we've got a really strong team in place, and everybody is really hopeful that we'll get support on both sides of the Atlantic to proceed."
Assuming formal approvals in the coming months, NASA and ESA officials say the sample retrieval mission could start with a pair of launches in 2026. March launch opportunities come every 26 months, but not all interplanetary windows are favorable for the departure of a round- trip mission, Watzin said.
"When you look at the round-trip aspects of going to and from Mars, propulsion demands are enormous," Watzin said in July. "The physics for launching and leaving a planet, both here on Earth and on Mars, can not support an every 26-month opportunity like we've been used to. There are a couple of opportunities where the energetics are manageable with a reasonable budget and reasonable technology, and the rest of the opportunities require the invention of new things. And a limited cost and affordable approach to the invention of new things.
"So we have two opportunities that we have seriously looked at, and they span from '26 to '29 in various shapes and forms," Watzin said.
The European Space Agency will provide a fetch rover, which will arrive on Mars aboard a U.S.-built lander and then drive off the NASA March 2020 rover. After gathering the sample tubes, the fetch rover will return the specimens to the NASA lander and transfer the materials into a mechanism to be loaded aboard a U.S.-built Mars Ascent Vehicle.
The fetch rover and Mars Ascent Vehicle will arrive on Mars aboard the same lander.
The rocket will loft the payload into orbit around Mars to rendezvous with a European-made Earth Return Orbiter, the spacecraft that will return the samples to Earth.
The U.S. lander and European fetch rover, including the NASA-provided Mars Ascent Vehicle, would launch on U.S. rocket in 2026. A few months later, the Earth Return Orbiter and U.S. re-entry vehicle would lift off a European launcher.
If the sample return missions launched in 2026, the March 2020 rover would be operating when they arrive at the Red Planet. That could give scientists a backup option to transfer the samples to the Mars Ascent Vehicle, in the case of fetch rover encounters problems.
"March 2020 has a player in this," Watzin said. "We have the operational option of holding tubes on March 2020 as a contingency against any future fighter rover, and we have the fetch rover picking up tubes that have been dropped as a contingency against March 2020."
In July, ESA released an invitation for European industry to submit proposals to the Earth Return Orbiter. Airbus Defense and Space received a study contract from ESA last year to begin designing for a fetch rover, building on Airbus' experience in building the European ExoMars rover set for launch next year, named Rosalind Franklin.
NASA engineers continue evaluating solid-fueled and hybrid propulsion options, including two-stage and single-stage variants, for the Mars Ascent Vehicle.
NASA will also supply the re-entry capsule to deliver the samples back to Earth's surface. After release from the European return craft, the capsule will target landing in the Utah desert in 2031.
Engineers plan to return the samples without a parachute. Instead, the vehicle will crash into the ground at high speed.
Watzin said drop tests show the samples will still be in good condition after a high-speed landing, and the tubes flying on the March 2020 rover were designed with the no-fall return in mind.
"We believe that we can not do without a fall," Watzin said.
NASA is concerned about the risk of extraterrestrial sampling. It is likely that the environment will be affected by a parachute failure.
"We do not want to inadvertently release the material we're bringing home," Watzin said. "We would have to survive the failure modes of whatever system we design, and a fall failure is … a reasonable probability failure mode. So we have to design it to work without a fall in the beginning. "
Designing the mission without a parachute will also save weight on the spacecraft.
"The lowest mass entry point is only one of those," Watzin said. "For those reasons, we went without (a parachute in our design). We know we have to prove it. "
Asked at a July meeting of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group on the use of commercial vehicles, such as SpaceX's planned Starship, Watzin said NASA is focused on using technology.
"We knew that we would like to do this sooner, so it did not seem sensible to go to where we had to develop, from the beginning, "Watzin said." "If that (Starship) capability matures and shows up, I'm sure we'll be doing it, but it's not going to make sense, when we do not really know what it's going to be, when it's going to be there, to make it the basis for the campaign. "
NASA's next flagship-class science mission after the March 2020 rover and the Europa Clipper probe, set for launch in 2020 and 2023, respectively.
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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ StephenClark1.
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