[meteorite-list] Mars Sample Return Proposal Stirs Excitement, Controversy

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2007 12:26:27 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <200707301926.MAA23759_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070726_mars_samplereturn.html

Mars Sample Return Proposal Stirs Excitement, Controversy
By Leonard David
space.com
26 July 2007

PASADENA, Calif. -- Proposals for a multibillion dollar Mars sample
return mission - perhaps even a comprehensive sample return program -
appear to be on the front burner again, but not without controversy.

It turns out, Alan Stern, NASA's new associate administrator for the
Science Mission Directorate, is a big proponent of Mars sample return.
But while many NASA planetary scientists share that sentiment, a number
of others also worry that such an ambitious mission - Stern estimates it
could cost from $3 billion to $4 billion - would suck up all the
available money for most other Mars missions in the next
decade and disrupt NASA's ability to send at least one robotic mission
to Mars every two years.

The Mars sample return program and related proposals for the early
caching of Mars samples were big topics at the Seventh International
Conference on Mars, held here July 9-13 at the California Institute of
Technology. The meeting brought together some 500 leading experts on the
red planet to discuss current and future exploration plans.

In a July 10 long-distance telephone hookup between meeting attendees
and Stern, he advised that the Mars sample return undertaking would
require "focus and discipline" to locate requisite funds for the effort
within the agency's budget.

Stern said he is personally looking at the 2018-2020 time period for
Mars sample return activities. To help fund the initiative, he proposed
skipping one Mars mission opportunity sometime during the next decade.

Stern also is backing use of the nuclear-powered Mars Science Laboratory
to practice caching Mars specimens. That large rover is under development
here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Putting a caching capability on
the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Stern said, would help build the
foundation of support for future Mars sample return activities, not only
in scientific and public circles, but also in Congress and the White
House Office of Management and Budget.

"I think there's something concrete about putting your stake in the
ground," Stern told the meeting attendees.

Technology demonstration

Stern has asked a tiger team at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain
View, Calif., to design sample caching gear to be installed on the Mars
Science Laboratory. A small, hockey puck-sized device is being studied,
seen as a "secondary payload" to be attached to the rover.

The final study results from the Ames team on the caching hardware are
due by the end of July or early August, reported Chris McKay, a
planetary scientist at the space agency field center who is helping to
assess the feasibility of the Mars Science Laboratory add-on.
Preliminary discussions also are under way with officials in the
European Space Agency's ExoMars rover project to carry similar sample
caching equipment on board that 2013 mission.

These NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) rovers would collect bits of
Mars during their respective exploration treks - preparatory to the
landing of a sample return craft designed to gather, then rocket back to
Earth a variety of select specimens of soil and rock from the red planet.

"I think there are things that we have to keep in mind as we move toward
a sample return program," McKay told SPACE.com. "It's not going to just
be a sample return. We're going to have a series of sample returns. We
have to think of it as a program. The first sample return ought to be a
simple, pathfinder-like sample return ... a technology demonstration."

Utilizing the Mars Science Laboratory for caching samples collected by
rovers would get people focused and thinking about sample return, McKay
said. "It ties sample return to the ongoing program. There's a tendency
to think of sample return as something 'out there' ... it doesn't need
to be. It can be something in the Mars program," he said.

McKay also said the sample return program has to connect, ultimately,
with human exploration of Mars.

A careful, delicate balance

At the Mars conference, placing an expensive sample return activity on
the exploration agenda, perhaps at the expense of other projects,
sparked some anxieties.

"I'm cautiously optimistic," said Philip Christensen, a leading Mars
scientist and professor in the Department of Geological Science at
Arizona State University in Tempe. "I am concerned that the sample
return mission would take over the Mars program. If you put that mission
too far into the future, with not much in between, then you lose a lot
of momentum ... a lot of young talented scientists and engineers," he said.

Christensen added that he sees "a real serious challenge" in carving out
enough money in the near-term to pay for Mars sample return and still
maintain a dynamic program.

"It's going to take a careful, delicate balance to be able to afford the
sample return and yet maintain some measure of a program," Christensen
told SPACE.com at the Mars meeting in Pasadena. "I have no expectation
that the program will be as dynamic and vigorous as it has been if we're
going to pay for a sample return. Something's got to give. But at the
same time you can't just give up everything."

Pragmatic sample return

In a July 17 phone interview, NASA's Stern told SPACE.com that he has
asked the Mars Science Laboratory project to add sample caching to the
mission rover's duties. "It's a late but viable opportunity" and would
explore techniques for follow-on Mars sample return work, he said.

The full life-cycle cost of the Mars Science Laboratory is $1.6 billion,
according to Guy Webster, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory spokesman. The
price tag for the caching apparatus, Stern noted, is $2 million for
hardware, plus integration costs to the Mars Science Laboratory.

"I want to get serious about Mars sample return and this is the way to
do it," Stern said. "This has been going on all my life, waiting for
Mars sample return and it never gets there. We're going to do a
pragmatic, but competent sample return."

Stern said he also has requested that ESA consider adding the Mars
Science Laboratory sample caching equipment to their ExoMars mission. He
said that he will discuss the matter with Daniel Sacotte, ESA's director
of human spaceflight, microgravity and exploration in a meeting later
this month at NASA headquarters.

"I want to be able to point up into the sky and say I already have a
sample waiting up there," Stern said. "I'm just opening possibilities."

It is not a given, however, that those pre-selected Mars samples would
later be robotically picked up for return to Earth, Stern said.

Make some history

Stern emphasized that the NASA Mars exploration program currently
occupies 46 percent of the space agency's $1.4 billion planetary
division budget.

"It won't get larger ... and there's already pressure to make it
smaller. We have to do something worthy of that 46 percent. The Mars
community has to thread a needle. If they don't do Mars sample return,
their budget is likely to shrink. They have to do a Mars sample return,
or get smaller.

That's my analysis, not my wish ... that's my analysis of the way the
politics will go," Stern said.

Stern said he thinks that a $3 billion to $4 billion Mars sample return
effort in 2018 is affordable, although architecture studies that
blueprint the concept must still be done before the agency can seek a
formal start to a sample return program and budget for it.

"Let's get this done ... make some history," Stern concluded.
Received on Mon 30 Jul 2007 03:26:27 PM PDT