However, they did estimate that ESA’s share would be 15-20% of the overall cost. NASA generally does not provide formal cost and schedule estimates for a mission until it is ready to enter Phase C, where the design is finalized and fabrication of components begins.Īsked about the costs of Mars Sample Return during their IAC presentation, neither Gramling nor Spoto would give a specific cost or range of costs. NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover successfully collected its first pair of rock samples, and scientists already are gaining new insights into the region. ![]() 1 the Mars Sample Return program entered Phase B, which covers preliminary design work and completion of key technologies needed for the future lander mission.īoth NASA and ESA officials have remained reticent to discuss the costs of the revised Mars Sample Return architecture, including any cost savings from deleting the fetch rover and a second lander that would have delivered it. In the announcement of the sample cache plans, NASA also said that on Oct. “Once we’ve done that, we’ll stop double sampling and continue to build the cache to be retained on Perseverance,” said Jeff Gramling, director of the Mars Sample Return program at NASA, at the IAC presentation. Perseverance had been taking duplicate samples from each site so that one set can be kept on Perseverance and the other deposited in the cache. “The depot is risk mitigation if the rover does not make the long journey” to the lander, said Francois Spoto, the Mars exploration group leader at ESA, during a presentation about Mars Sample Return at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Paris Sept. That lander will have two small helicopters, based on the Ingenuity helicopter accompanying Perseverance, that will fly to the cache, collect sample tubes, and return them to the lander. This cache serves as a backup should Perseverance be unable to return to the lander. Instead, it will rely on Perseverance as the primary means of returning samples to a future lander, which will then launch them into orbit to be picked up by an ESA orbiter for return to Earth. What it does is scoop up some dirt - drop it into one of the containers - which is then sealed and. That strategy does away with a European “fetch” rover that was to pick up samples cached by Perseverance. No - the rover has no means to return these samples. The sample cache is part of a revised strategy for the overall Mars Sample Return campaign announced in July. When that first tube is positioned on the surface, it will be a historic moment in space exploration,” Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, said in a statement. ![]() “NASA and ESA have reviewed the proposed site and the Mars samples that will be deployed for this cache as soon as next month. Those samples, encased in metallic tubes, will be picked up for return to Earth by later missions. 28 that the agencies agreed to deposit some of the 14 samples collected by Perseverance to date at a location dubbed “Three Forks” in Jezero Crater, near the remnants of an ancient river delta that once flowed into the crater. WASHINGTON - NASA and the European Space Agency have selected a location on Mars to cache samples collected by the Perseverance rover, one step in the overall process of returning those samples to Earth.
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