The cost of NASA's proposed mission to collect rocks on Mars and bring them back to Earth is on the rise, sliding further into the future. So on Monday, space agency officials asked for ideas to simplify missions and lower prices.
“The bottom line is $11 billion is too high,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at a press conference Monday. “And not returning samples until 2040 is unacceptably too long.”
The mission, known as Mars Sample Return, is central to the search for signs that life may have existed on Mars. The idea is to bring rock and soil samples back to Earth so scientists can poke and prod at them using the most sophisticated tools.
NASA had expected Mars sample return to cost between $5 billion and $7 billion and that the stones would arrive on Earth in 2033.
But a committee that reviewed the mission last fall concluded that the cost would likely be much higher, between $8 billion and $11 billion. NASA officials said Monday that after reviewing the review, they agreed with the cost estimates and said current Mars sample return missions would not be able to deliver rocks by 2040, given budget constraints.
NASA plans to issue a “request for information” on Tuesday seeking alternative proposals from aerospace companies and experts within NASA, with proposals expected to be submitted on May 17. In time, NASA will fund some of the proposals and the research will be completed later. this year. If that happens, NASA will need to decide its next steps.
“We need to address new possibilities for highly innovative designs, and we need to make sure we leave no stone unturned,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
At the same time, he said he wants a “traditional, proven architecture” that reduces the risk of delays and failures.
“This is a Hail Mary,” Casey Dreier, director of space policy at the Planetary Society, a nonprofit organization that supports space exploration, said in an interview. Dreier said he believed that simply announcing a postponement would reduce the amount of money NASA would spend on the mission that year and increase the final cost.
“From our perspective, that would have been an easier way to keep the plan as it is and add certainty where there was uncertainty,” Dreier said.
The first phase of Mars sample return is already underway. NASA's Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars in 2021, has excavated and collected cylindrical samples of rock and soil in Jezero Crater, which contains an ancient river delta.
The current Mars sample return mission, devised by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, involves a complex plan. First, a new robotic spacecraft will land near the Perseverance rover, which will hand over about 30 rock samples. They will then be launched into orbit around Mars. Another European Space Agency spacecraft was scheduled to pick up the samples, bring them back to Earth, and land them in the Utah desert in a small saucer-shaped vehicle.
One idea for making the mission faster and cheaper might be to leave some of the samples on Mars. That would reduce the size and complexity of the spacecraft needed.
If scientists were forced to choose which rocks they most wanted, “I think it would be a very lively and very exciting scientific conversation,” Dr. Fox said.
Dreier wrote an essay in February about whether NASA could turn to Elon Musk's SpaceX to make robotic Mars sample return missions more affordable. SpaceX's giant Starship rocket is designed to send people to Mars.
“The answer is almost certainly no,” Dreyer wrote at the time. “At least not right away.”
But if Musk and SpaceX are interested, NASA is now willing to listen. Dreyer said SpaceX needs to solve a number of technical challenges, including how to manufacture the propellant for the round trip.
“Is this cheaper than the original JPL concept, or is it more expensive, time consuming and risky?” Dreyer said, referring to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's plans. Told.
SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
Dreier, an optimist, said maybe Nelson was right and someone would come up with a better solution.
But he added that Monday's NASA announcement could be an excuse to cancel the mission or to try to convince Congress that $11 billion is actually needed. .
“People may not want to accept that it costs that much,” he says. “I think that's one of the things we're going to find out.”
