Bringing pieces of Mars to Earth is more expensive than expected

Loading player

For the past three years, NASA’s Perseverance automated robot (rover) has been collecting samples of rocks and soil on Mars, as part of an ambitious project to one day bring them to Earth and analyze them for traces of life and more. The collection was fruitful and the rover set aside around thirty samples, but there is the risk that these remain on the planet and are not delivered to terrestrial research groups, both due to the technical complexities and because the costs of the mission they increased more than expected to the point of leading NASA to review its plans.

After months of comparisons, analyzes and cost reviews, on Monday 15 April the leaders of the US space agency recognized that under current conditions the transport of Martian samples to Earth would be impossible. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson used his direct, no-nonsense style to clarify this: “The bottom line is that $11 billion in spending is too much and that 2040 is too far ahead.” Nelson then added that: “We need to think outside the box to find a way that is cost-effective and allows us to recover samples in a reasonable amount of time.”

The Mars Sample Return mission was designed in parallel with that of Perseverance, a rover roughly the size of a small car that reached Mars at the beginning of February 2021, with a controlled landing as complex as it was spectacular. The rover had been equipped with a system for collecting samples of Martian soil, to be inserted into small metal cylinders, some to be kept inside the robot and others to be collected in an area of ​​Mars as a reserve in case of some malfunction of Perseverance .

NASA then began working on the recovery mission, something never attempted before and with great technical difficulties, involving the European Space Agency (ESA) to share tasks and burdens. The plan at the time of Perseverance’s launch was not yet well defined and after three years several details are still missing.

Mars Sample Return expects that at a certain point Perseverance will be joined by a new robot sent from Earth, with the task of taking the cylinders containing the samples from the rover and launching them into orbit around Mars. At this point an ESA probe should collect them and travel towards Earth, finally depositing them in the Utah desert, with a system similar to that used by NASA last year to transport some samples taken from an asteroid.

The mission was initially expected to cost around $5-7 billion (more than double the initial cost of Perseverance), but already in the early planning stages it became clear that costs would increase given the complexity of the initiative. NASA had also predicted a relatively tight timeframe, with sample recovery and transportation to Earth to be accomplished by 2033, a deadline deemed impractical given planning delays.

Strong doubts about Mars Sample Return had led to some suspensions of plans and above all to a review of the mission, which concluded last autumn. A commission had concluded that the entire initiative would cost between 8 and 11 billion dollars, barring substantial changes to the entire project. The recovery date was also revised, with a seven-year shift to 2040. The commission’s work was then submitted to NASA officials, who ultimately chose to completely review the plans, essentially asking anyone with a good idea to to come forward.

NASA has in fact proposed to private space companies, experts and its own employees to develop and present alternative proposals to the original plan by May 17th. The most promising ideas will be put into the study and preliminary development phase, in order to have some alternatives by the end of the year on which to base the next decisions for Mars Sample Return.

NASA’s decision surprised many observers, because initially it was thought that the space agency intended to postpone the initiative for a few years, so as to be able to spread the costs over more time, thus reducing the impact of the expense on its annual budget . It is a practice that NASA has followed on several occasions in the past, also betting on the possibility of obtaining greater funding in the meantime from Congress, which decides every year how much funding to allocate to research and space activities in the United States.

The approach followed instead involves reducing costs by changing the initial plan, with all the risks that derive from relying more on private individuals, moving away from the projects so far developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), NASA’s most important division for development and the project of automatic vehicles for the exploration of the Solar System. JPL has led to some of the greatest successes for NASA, but unlike private companies it moves with great caution as it cannot afford failures that would lead to a reduction in its budget, based on public funding.

It is not clear which space companies could make proposals, although in the past there had been talk of a possible involvement of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company, which has long had a plan for the exploration and even colonization of Mars. However, SpaceX, like other companies, does not currently have reliable systems to reach the planet, nor does it have experience in developing rovers and other automatic vehicles to make a controlled landing or to transport something into its orbit from Martian soil.

Martian panorama taken by the Perseverance rover (NASA)

A simplification of Mars Sample Return could consist in reducing the quantity of samples to be brought to Earth, compared to the thirty expected so far. However, this would entail a difficult choice as to which samples to choose, with all the resulting scientific implications for the study of the characteristics of the Martian soil and its history.

Mars is one of the most studied planets in the Solar System and over the years it has been visited by a large number of probes and robots. Its rocky nature makes it similar to Earth in some respects and we have long wondered whether in the past, before becoming desolate and with a very rarefied atmosphere, it hosted some form of life. Over the years, numerous clues have been found, thanks to the activities carried out by the rovers on samples taken from the ground and analyzed directly on the planet with their instruments. However, carrying out scientific research remotely is not easy and much more in-depth analyzes could be carried out by directly placing samples in laboratories here on Earth.

NASA’s decision has been much discussed in the last few hours by experts and analysts, above all because it concerns the continuation of an already ongoing and successful mission like that of Perseverance. In the absence of convincing proposals and without the willingness of Congress to increase funding, the Martian champions may never leave their planet and continue to accompany Perseverance until the end of its mission.