SpaceX to the rescue of NASA's Mars mission?

NASA Office of IG highlights serious concerns about the sample return mission sustainability
An representational image showing a concept for multiple robots that would team up to ferry to Earth samples. — NASA
An representational image showing a concept for multiple robots that would team up to ferry to Earth samples. — NASA

Mars sample return, a vital NASA project in the quest for life beyond Earth, is in peril. NASA sample return funding has grown from $5 billion to more than $11 billion, and the sample return date may be pushed back from the end of this decade to 2040.

The mission would be the first to attempt to return rock samples from Mars to Earth so that scientists could examine them for evidence of previous life.

During a news conference on April 15, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson stated that the mission as it is now envisaged is both expensive and sluggish. NASA offered commercial businesses a month to submit plans for returning the samples in a faster and more inexpensive manner.

In addition, Mars is the closest and greatest site to look for life beyond Earth, and if NASA's ambitious mission fails, scientists will miss out on the opportunity to learn much more about the red planet.

Read more: Earth under solar siege — ‘Extreme’ geomagnetic storm threatens blackouts, satellite disruptions

The livability of Mars

The first NASA flights to reach Mars' surface in 1976 revealed the planet as a freezing desert, inhospitable without a thick atmosphere to protect life from the Sun's UV radiation.

However, research undertaken over the last decade suggests that the Earth may have been significantly warmer and wetter several billion years ago.

Moreover, the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have both demonstrated that the planet's early environment was favourable for microbial life.

They discovered the molecular building elements of Mars life and evidence of surface water in the distant past. Curiosity, which arrived on Mars in 2012, is still operational; its twin, Perseverance, which landed in 2021, will play an important part in the NASA sample return mission.

Why astronomers desire Mars samples

NASA initially probed for life in a Martian rock in 1996. Scientists claimed to have found minuscule remains of bacteria in the Martian meteorite ALH84001.

This meteorite, a chunk of Mars, crashed in Antarctica 13,000 years ago and was found in 1984.

However, scientists debated on whether the meteorite had ever harboured biology, and most scientists now think that there is insufficient evidence to conclude that the rock includes fossils.

Hundreds of Martian meteorites have been discovered on Earth during the last 40 years. They are free samples that fell to Earth, whereas, studying them may seem obvious, scientists have no idea where these meteorites originated on Mars.

In addition, collisions blasted them off the planet's surface, and such violent events might easily destroy or alter delicate signs of life in the rock.

There is no replacement for returning samples from a location known to have previously supported life. As a result, the government is facing a $700 million cost per ounce, making these samples the most costly material ever collected.

Read more: Boeing proposes SLS rocket for Mars sample return, but at what cost?

A compelling and complex mission

Perseverance has gathered approximately two dozen rock and soil samples and deposited them on the bottom of the Jezero Crater, a place that was previously flooded and might have supported life.

Moreover, the US Mars rover deposits the samples into test tube-sized containers. After filling all of the sample tubes, the rover will collect them and transport them to the location where NASA's sample retrieval lander will land. The sample retrieval lander has a rocket to propel the samples into orbit around Mars.

However, the European Space Agency has developed an Earth Return Orbiter that will rendezvous with the rocket in orbit and collect the basketball-sized sample container.

The samples will subsequently be automatically packed in a biocontainment device and transported to an Earth entry capsule as part of the Earth Return Orbiter. Following the lengthy journey home, the entrance capsule will drop to the Earth's surface.

In addition, this mission's complicated choreography, which includes a US Mars rover, a lander, a rocket, an orbiter, and two space agencies working together, is unprecedented. It is the cause of the soaring budget and the delayed timetable.

Read more: What happens when you fall into a black hole?

Sample return breaks the bank

Mars sample return funding has punched a hole in NASA's budget, jeopardising future missions that require financing. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the NASA centre that oversees the project, recently laid off nearly 500 staff.

The layoffs were most likely prompted in part by the Mars Sample Return budget, but they also stemmed from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's overburdened plate of planetary missions and budget cuts.

An independent review board study and a report from the NASA Office of Inspector General highlighted serious concerns about the sample return mission sustainability. These assessments assessed the mission's design as unnecessarily complicated, citing inflation, supply chain concerns, and unrealistic cost and schedule forecasts.

NASA is said to be under criticism from Congress. For fiscal year 2024, the Senate Appropriations Committee reduced NASA's planetary research budget by more than half a billion dollars. If NASA fails to keep costs under control, the project may be cancelled entirely.