Scientists are proposing splitting an ambitious multibillion-dollar mission to return samples from Mars into three pieces to ease budget concerns, officials said this week. Speaking to reporters from an astrobiology conference in Houston, researchers said the next round of robotic missions to explore the solar system will be better equipped to hunt for past or present life.
The holy grail of those missions is a project to collect soil samples from Mars and return them to Earth. Officials did not disclose a predicted cost for the mission, but it will be expensive enough to warrant a joint endeavor between NASA and the European Space Agency.
A joint Mars exploration initiative finalized last year between NASA and ESA calls for a cooperative sample return mission some time in the 2020s. The sample return effort would follow joint orbiters and landers launching in 2016, 2018 and 2020.
Making a Mars sample return mission more affordable Spaceflight Now
Space plans outlined on Cosmonauts’ Day RT
As Russia celebrates 49 years since the first manned orbital launch, head of the national space agency has outlined its immediate plans. He brings bad news for tourists and optimism for a Mars satellite sampling mission. Next year, a Phobos-Grunt mission is to travel to Mars’ satellite. The automated craft will sample Phobos’ soil and return with it to Earth. Another prospective project is the development of a nuclear spacecraft engine. Roscosmos estimates the project at several billion dollars and plans to publish first design details in 2012. The engine will be ready for testing in space by 2018, Perminov said.
Mars glacier lubricant could fuel rockets New Scientist
Rocket engines could benefit from a natural Martian lubricant – but not to keep them oiled. A salty sludge that may be lubricating the ice caps of Mars could one day provide fuel.
The ice is too cold to flow normally. But if winds were to carry salty soil particles to the ice cap, they might gradually sink to form a briny bed, kept liquid by the planet’s warmth. This could allow the ice cap to flow like a glacier, say David Fisher at the Geological Survey of Canada in Ottawa, and colleagues.
Such brine would freeze as it moved toward lower temperatures at the edge of the ice cap, forming a ring of concentrated salt. This could one day be mined as a component of solid rocket fuel, says Fisher.
Bringing back Mars life
NASA’s original exobiology plan called for 100 missions to be flown to Mars by this time. But reality has fallen far short of the plan. NASA’s proposals for a Mars sample return have been stymied repeatedly, due to cost and logistical considerations.
Over the past couple of years, scientists have been closing in on another sample return concept – and the radical shift in NASA’s space vision, announced just this month, could conceivably bring the plan for bringing back Mars life into sharp focus.
Here’s the current timeline, as laid out by the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group, or MEPAG:
How to Protect Mars Samples on Earth
A returning spacecraft may someday hurtle through Earth’s atmosphere bearing evidence of life from Mars. But scientists won’t casually crack open the precious payload in any old laboratory. They will need a specially-designed building that not only protects the Martian samples from terrestrial contamination, but also prevents any Martian material or organisms from escaping into Earth’s biosphere.
Such a Mars sample return mission could signal a huge scientific coup for understanding the red planet’s ability to harbor life, and so NASA launched the initial phases of a sample return mission in the late 1990s. Programmatic considerations, including technical and budgetary concerns, killed the mission planning early on, but the U.S. space agency continued to study what type of sample return facility (SRF) might become necessary for such a mission.
Now NASA’s Mars team has released the results of that study. Three architectural firms drew up plans for how humans and robots could handle extraterrestrial samples within special facilities.
NASA and ESA sign Mars agreement
The US and European space agencies have signed the “letter of intent” that ties together their Mars programmes.
The agreement, which was penned in Washington DC, gives the green light to scientists and engineers to begin the joint planning of Red Planet missions.
The union will start with a European-led orbiter in 2016, and continue with surface rovers in 2018, and then perhaps a network of landers in 2018.
The ultimate aim is a mission to return Mars rock and soils to Earth labs.
Mars Sample Return: the next step in exploring the Red Planet
ESA and the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) will be co-hosting, in cooperation with NASA and the International Mars Exploration Working Group (IMEWG), an International Conference on 9 and 10 July in the Auditorium of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris* to discuss the next step in the exploration of Mars.
We are still collecting data under NASA’s Phoenix, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Exploration Rover and Mars Odyssey missions, as well as under ESA’s Mars Express mission, as we prepare for even more exciting missions to come, notably NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory and ESA’s ExoMars. Mars exploration is continuing at a steady pace and future missions will integrate scientific payloads and technologies that will eventually serve the ultimate goal of carrying out a manned mission to Mars. The international community has for a long time agreed that the next imperative step, one which will exponentially increase our knowledge and understanding of the Red Planet and its environment, is a Sample Return Mission.
Scientists Revisit Mars Sample Return Plans
International planning is under way to reinvigorate plans for a Mars sample return mission, with researchers assessing science priorities and strategies to maximize the scientific output from such an undertaking.
Over the last several years, an armada of orbital and surface missions has revealed Mars to be surprisingly more complex than once thought, imbued with a variety of distinct environments — each of value in terms of possible scientific payback given a sample return effort.
Mars samples returned to state-of-the-art Earth laboratories are considered by many to be the only way to unravel a host of unresolved questions about the red planet. A sample return mission also is viewed by many as a key tool to help space agencies prepare for future human expeditions to Mars.
China-Russia plan joint mission to Mars
China and Russia plan to launch a joint mission to Mars in 2009 to scoop up rocks from the red planet and one of its moons, a Chinese scientist said on Wednesday.
Russia will launch the spacecraft, while China will provide the survey equipment to carry out the unmanned exploration, Ye Peijian, a senior scientist at the Chinese Academy of Space Technology, told a meeting in Beijing, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
The mission will be another step in China’s ambitious program to jump to the forefront of space exploration.
Russia approves space funding
The Russian Cabinet on Tuesday approved a nine-year government program to expand its space programs, backing the ongoing development of the new Clipper spacecraft as well as building Russia’s segment of the international space station. In its statement, the Federal Space Agency did not say how much funding the programs would receive. But it said the government plans include a new project called the Phobos-Grunt, which will be sent to the Martian moon of Phobos to collect soil samples. By the end of 2006, the space agency will begin work on preparations for a manned trip to Mars.