On Wednesday, NASA introduced that it had made main adjustments to its plan for returning samples from the floor of Mars within the early 2030s. At present being collected by the Perseverance rover, the samples are set to be moved to Earth by a relay of rovers and rockets. Now, impressed by the success of the Ingenuity helicopter, NASA is saying it might lose one of many rovers, changing it with a pair of helicopters as an alternative.
The Mars pattern return plan entails a big assortment of challenges, however a central one is that the samples are presently in Perseverance, however ultimately have to finish up in a rocket that takes off from the floor of Mars. That signifies that Perseverance must get shut sufficient to the rocket’s touchdown website—which we will not select exactly—to change the samples, presumably diverting it from scientific aims. It additionally cannot be too shut when the rocket lands because the rocket’s touchdown and its related {hardware} might pose a danger to the rover and its samples.
The unique plan included a contingency. Perseverance would strategy after the rocket had landed, and the samples could be transferred instantly. If that did not work out for no matter cause, a second rover despatched to Mars by the ESA would act as an middleman, visiting a website the place the samples had been cached, retrieving them, after which delivering them to the rocket.
Within the new plan, that second rover has been eradicated. Instead? Two helicopters. These might be delivered as a part of the identical payload because the rocket carrying the samples to orbit. Because of this, the brand new plan entails solely a single lander (past the one which delivered Perseverance) that may carry each the rocket and the helicopters, considerably decreasing the chance of the general plan.
These helicopters, naturally, might be based mostly on the design of Ingenuity, which was despatched to Mars as a take a look at automobile and considerably outperformed expectations, finishing 29 flights over a 12 months. Given that have, NASA is assured that helicopters might be designed to hold small payloads and probably full a number of flights between the return rocket and wherever the samples are positioned—both on Perseverance or at a cache location.
After that, the plan stays the identical. The samples might be loaded right into a container positioned on the NASA-designed Mars Ascent Automobile carrying them to orbit. There, the container might be transferred to the Earth Return Orbiter, constructed by ESA, which can get them again to Earth in 2033, at which level they may drop by means of the environment for retrieval and examine.
The subsequent step might be approval by ESA, after which each companies will begin the preliminary design section, which can deal with all the main points on the completely different automobiles that might be wanted. In the meantime, Perseverance has already gathered a dozen samples from the floor of the pink planet.