Last April, NASA held a press conference in which it announced that it was not able to carry out the Mars Sample Return mission as it had been planned, due to time and cost problems. For this reason, it turned to the outside world, also making an appeal to the private sector looking for ideas to be able to collect and bring back to Earth the samples that the Perseverance rover is setting aside on the surface of Mars.
Now NASA has announced that it has selected ten ideas worthy of further feasibility studies. Three come from NASA centers, JPL and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. The other seven candidates who responded to NASA’s appeal belong to private industry, a list that includes other historical industrial partners of the American space agency, such as Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman, but also new realities such as SpaceX and Blue Origin. In particular, this is the list of projects selected by NASA:
- Lockheed Martin: “Lockheed Martin – Rapid Mission Design Studies for Sample Return from Mars”;
- SpaceX: “Enabling sample return from Mars with Starship”;
- Aerojet Rocketdyne: “A high-performance liquid-fueled vehicle for Mars ascent, using highly reliable and mature propulsion technologies, to improve affordability and program schedule”;
- Blue Origin: “Exploiting Artemis for the Return of Champions from Mars”;
- Quantum Space: “Quantum Anchor Leg Study for the Return of Samples from Mars”;
- Northrop Grumman: “Comparative study of high-TRL MAV propulsion and conceptual design for rapid MSR mission design”;
- Whittinghill Aerospace: “A Rapid Design Study for the Single-Stage Mars Ascent Vehicle for Mars Sample Return (MSR).”
Each of these companies will be contracted for a maximum of $1.5 million to carry out a feasibility study to present to NASA in the next 90 days. Among the ideas, that of SpaceX is surprising, which would see the use of Starship. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has been clear that he wants to complete the mission within the next decade at all costs. As we saw last week, despite great progress, SpaceX has yet to complete Starship and prove it can land it on Earth. Landing on Mars is terribly more complicated, due to the thin atmosphere, in addition to the difficulties inherent in such a long journey, not to mention the need to then also take off from the surface of Mars. And before arriving on Mars, SpaceX also has the task of bringing Man back to the Moon with Artemis III.
