NASA narrows down to 2 options its reworked Mars Sample Return mission

Richard Tribou, Orlando Sentinel on Jan 7, 2025

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NASA announced Tuesday it had narrowed down to two options the reworked Mars Sample Return mission aiming for a cheaper and quicker completion than the version that was killed last year.

One would be to use a version of the sky crane system that was used to land both the Mars rovers Perseverance and Curiosity safely on the Martian surface. The other would be to use a heavy lander from a commercial partner such as SpaceX or Blue Origin.

“Either of these two options are creating a much more simplified, faster and less expensive version of the original plan,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

The cost of the original MSR plan had ballooned to a projected cost of $11 billion with a sample not getting back to Earth until at least 2040.

“That was just simply unacceptable,” Nelson said. “It was my decision that, in consultation with everyone, we pulled the plug on it.”

That decision came last April, and Tuesday’s announcement was the culmination of an MSR strategy review team that was formed. NASA is still sticking with two options for now because the commercial company pitches need more time to gather information, Nelson said.

Either options has to land on Mars, collect 30 samples that have been collected since 2021 by Perseverance, and then get those off the planet and back to Earth.

“They need to flesh out all of the possibilities of what’s required in the engineering for the commercial option,” he said. “We want to have the quickest, cheapest way to get the 30 samples back.”

Both options would use the existing plan to have a Mars ascent vehicle that would take the samples up to an orbiting spacecraft run by the European Space Agency that is aiming for launch in 2030. The ESA spacecraft would then fly the samples back toward Earth with either a direct landing, or parking in the space between Earth and the moon, which would require yet another method to get the full sample back home.

Nelson said the sky crane option would cost from $6.6 billion to $7.7 billion while the commercial options range from $5.8 billion to $7.1 billion.

The direct return method could see the samples returned by 2035, but could go out to as far as 2039, Nelson said.

“A good reason of why it could get extended out is if the Congress and the new administration do not respond,” Nelson said. “I’m stating to you at this point that bottom line of $300 million is what the Congress ought to consider.”

And if they want to get a direct return earlier, that should be even more than $300 million starting with this fiscal year, and maintaining that for each successive year.

Nelson said the latest Senate version of this year’s budget has $200 million earmarked for MSR, while the House version is at $600 million.

NASA’s Nicky Fox, head of the Science Mission Directorate, said both options have to finalize the design of a lower mass Mars ascent vehicle than what was previously planned as well as figuring out how the 30 samples will be collected.

“Whichever path we go forward with, there is work to be done to get us to a point where we can say, ‘Yes, yea, verily, This is the mission. This is the mission we’re going to go forward with. This is when we confirm the budget. This is when we confirm the schedule,'” Fox said.

The earliest launch for whichever option is the final choice to bring the ascent vehicle to Mars would be 2031, Fox said.

“This is really extraordinary science, and we can’t wait to study in more detail and in ways that honestly, we just can’t do robotically on the surface of Mars,” Fox said. “So therefore, it is of utmost importance to us that we bring back these samples to Earth as quickly as possible.”

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