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Airbus, which presents a strategic plan for the future in London, will be responsible for two key elements of the Mars Sample Mission Mission project, which NASA and ESA proposed as a joint mission last April and hope to be approved by the council. of the European agency in 2019.
As part of these plans, it is planned to launch in 2026 a rover which will be responsible for recovering samples previously deposited on Martian soil by a NASA vehicle, the Mars2020.
The exploration rover will leave 36 sample tubes the size of a ballpoint pen on the surface of the red planet ready to be removed, Airbus said in a statement
The ESA vehicle will recover these tubes and load them into a container. from an ascension vehicle that will wait.
Then, the ascension vehicle will take off from the surface and put the sample container into orbit, which will give rise to the third part of the mission, in which the orbiter vehicle will collect the container, seal it with a biological containment system and drive it to the Earth.
"Our long experience in complex scientific exploration missions such as Rosetta, BepiColombo and MarsExpress gives us a great benefit for this study," said Patrick Lelong, head of the Airbus project for the design of the company. orbiter (Earth Return Orbiter)
"The mission is a great technological challenge, but the prospect of a sample of Mars on Earth is very exciting."
Martian robot design project leader, Ben Boyes , said that the joint mission of ESA and NASA is "ambitious and technologically very" It will have two robots that will interact on Mars for the first time, "said Boyes, who stressed that the arrival of samples "will directly study the soil" of the red planet "in the laboratories of the Earth"
For the director of Human Exploration and Robotics of the Earth ESA, David Parker, bringing Extraterrestrial specimens are "essential" for various reasons.
"Among them, understand by that Mars, despite being the most Earth-like system, took a different course in its evolution than Earth's," he said
"Also to fully understand the Martian environment and allow humans to work one day and live on the red planet," said Parker, who defined the project as "another milestone" in exploration of Mars
EFE / MF
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