The Perseverance rover has been toiling on the Martian surface for over three years, collecting rock samples that will eventually be brought to Earth if all goes according to plan. But the rover has also picked up hitchhikers, in the form of traces of Martian atmosphere that are squeezed into the “headspace” of the…
NASA is calling on industry players to come up with an alternative plan to return rocky samples from Mars at a lower cost and an earlier date.
NASA is scaling back on its ambitious Mars Sample Return (MSR) program, fearing federal budget cuts to the space agency’s plan to bring back rock and dust from the Red Planet, which has come under heavy scrutiny for having unrealistic costs and timelines.
Six California lawmakers wrote to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson last week to oppose the agency’s recent cuts to the Mars Sample Return mission, which aims to bring samples collected by the Perseverance rover on Mars to Earth.
NASA is pulling back from its Mars Sample Return program (MSR) in order to develop a revised way of bringing the Martian rocks back to Earth after its original plan was deemed unrealistic.
NASA is considering alternative ways to bring back samples from Mars after its budget and schedule for the sample return mission was deemed unrealistic in a recent report by an independent review board.
The findings from an independent review board suggest that NASA’s quest to return samples from Mars is riddled with challenges and seemingly impossible to accomplish under the current cost and schedule expectations.
NASA’s Perseverance rover has been diligently collecting rocky samples from Mars to stow them away on the planet’s dusty surface while engineers work to develop a rocket that can launch off of another world as a crucial step in the process of retr
For more than two years, NASA’s Perseverance rover has been roaming Mars, drilling for rock samples that may hold clues to ancient life on the Red Planet, but the six-wheeled robot can only travel so far. Luckily, the rover recently got some extra help from a river that once flowed on the surface of Mars.
