With its plan to return samples from Mars in jeopardy, NASA is now making a desperate plea for outside help to save the costly and complex mission.
NASA administrator Bill Nelson and the agency's head of science, Nikki Fox, announced Monday they will seek suggestions from the greater space industry with a formal request for ideas. The agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which has been overseeing the mission from California, has already laid off about 530 employees — about 8 percent of its workforce — and 40 contractors in the face of budget constraints.
NASA will solicit new concept proposals for the mission that could reduce spending and hasten the timeline. The agency is also asking other NASA campuses to weigh in. By the fall, they hope to have some new ideas to consider.
When asked what happens if there aren't any practical solutions, administrator Bill Nelson quipped, "Better than not to try."
"I suspect if folks at NASA and our contractors and our centers and JPL put their minds to it, these are folks who can figure out rather difficult things," he said during a call with reporters.
Mars Sample Return, a complex mission to bring rocks and dirt back from the Red Planet, has been at a crossroads since last year. The mission's swelling costs have led to layoffs and warnings of cancellation from Congress.
Independent reviews have found that the mission would likely cost upward of $11 billion to achieve by the 2030s — or would require delays that would set back the return to at least 2040. That spending projection is more than 50 percent higher than a range recommended by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
But the nonpartisan Planetary Society has said the program is too important for NASA to scrap.
"Do the science, do it now, and do it with balance," wrote Casey Dreier, the group's senior space policy adviser.
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NASA's Perseverance rover, a car-size lab on six wheels, has been collecting samples from the Jezero crater since 2021 with the hope they can be returned to Earth for scientific scrutiny.
Over the course of its exploration, Perseverance has been drilling into rocks and filling pairs of sample tubes so that each has a backup supply. The plan has been for the rover to eventually deliver the samples to a robotic lander equipped with a rocket to bring them back for study.
"Better than not to try."
If Perseverance couldn't make the transfers, Plan B would involve recovering the duplicate tubes from the ground where the rover is intentionally dropping them. In that scenario, drones similar to the recently deceased Ingenuity helicopter would pick them up and fly them to a lander.
Once the 30-or-so sample tubes had left Mars on the rocket, another spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet would bring them some 140 million miles back to Earth, according to the original plan. (With both planets constantly moving, their exact distance is always changing.)
NASA sent Perseverance to the crater because it's a place where planetary scientists think microscopic organisms — a.k.a. life — might have potentially existed long ago. The region is thought to be a dried delta, where water once emptied from a river into a lake. The remaining rocks may contain relics or clues about ancient life forms, if there ever were any.
The mission, a partnership with the European Space Agency, would not only include the first attempt to bring back dust and dirt from another full-fledged planet but also the first launch from the surface of another planet. Recovering the samples would fulfill one of the highest priorities of the scientific community for the next decade.
"This is not just a grab-a-rock mission," Fox said. "These are very carefully, scientifically curated, and selected samples [from] a very diverse set of locations."
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