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With its plan to return samples of Mars endangered, POT is now making a desperate plea for outside help to save the expensive and complex mission.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and the agency’s chief science officer, Nikki Fox, announced Monday that they will seek input from most space industry with a formal request for ideas. The agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which has been overseeing the mission from California, has already fired about 530 employees (about 8 percent of its workforce) and 40 contractors versus budget constraints.
NASA will do it request proposals for new concepts for the mission that could reduce spending and accelerate the schedule. The agency is also asking other NASA campuses to intervene. By fall, they hope to have some new ideas to consider.
When asked what happens if there are no practical solutions, administrator Bill Nelson joked, “It’s better than not trying.”
“I suspect that if the people at NASA, our contractors, our centers and JPL put their minds to it, they are people who can solve some pretty difficult things,” he said during a call with reporters.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which has been overseeing the mission from California, has already laid off about 530 employees (about 8 percent of its workforce) and 40 contractors amid budget constraints.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Mars sample returna complex mission to bring rocks and soil back of the Red Planet, has been at a crossroads since last year. The mission’s rising costs have led to layoffs and cancellation warnings from Congress.
Independent reviews have found that the mission would likely cost more than 11 billion dollars reach by the 2030s, or would require delays that would delay the return to at least 2040. That spending projection is more than 50 percent higher than a range recommended by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
Crushable speed of light
But the nonpartisan Planetary Society has said the program is too important for NASA to scrap.
“Do science, do it now, and do it with balance.” wrote Casey Dreiergroup’s senior space policy advisor.
The tweet may have been deleted.
NASA’s Perseverance rover, a car-sized laboratory with six wheels, has been collecting samples from Jezero Crater from 2021 in the hope that they can be returned to Earth for scientific scrutiny.
Over the course of its exploration, Perseverance has been drilling into rocks and filling pairs of sample tubes so that each has a backup supply. The plan was for the rover to eventually deliver the samples to a robotic lander equipped with a rocket bring them back to study them.
“It’s better than not trying.”
Plan B for recovering backup samples from Mars has been to use drones to deliver them to a lander.
Credit: NASA illustration
If Perseverance could not make the transfers, Plan B would involve recovering duplicate tubes from the ground where the rover intentionally drops them. In this scenario, drones similar to the recently deceased Ingenuity helicopter would pick them up and take them to a lander.
Once the roughly 30 sample tubes had left Mars on the rocket, another spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet would bring them back to Earth about 225 million kilometers away, according to the original plan. (As both planets are constantly moving, their exact distance always changes.)
The plan was for the rover to deliver the samples to a rocket-equipped robotic lander further ahead to take them back for study.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
POT sent Perseverance to the crater because it’s a place where planetary scientists believe microscopic organisms, also known as life, could have existed long ago. The region is believed to be a dry delta, where river water once flowed into a lake. The remaining rocks may contain relics or clues to ancient life forms, if there ever were any.
The mission, a partnership with the European Space Agency, would not only include the first full-fledged attempt to bring back dust and dirt from another planet, but also the first launch from the surface of another planet. Recovering the samples would meet one of the scientific community’s top priorities for the next decade.
“This is not just a mission to grab a rock,” Fox said. “These are very carefully selected samples, scientifically selected (from) a very diverse set of places.”
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