[meteorite-list] Mars Sample-Return Goal Drives NASA's Exploration of Red Planet

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2012 15:59:00 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201209252259.q8PMx1wV002228_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.space.com/17757-mars-sample-return-nasa-future-missions.html

Mars Sample-Return Goal Drives NASA's Exploration of Red Planet
by Mike Wall
space.com
25 September 2012

The next steps in NASA's Mars exploration strategy should build toward
returning Martian rocks and dirt to Earth to search for signs of past
life, a new report by the space agency's Red Planet planning group finds.

The report, released today (Sept. 25) by the Mars Program Planning Group
(MPPG), lays out a series of options that NASA could employ to get pieces
of the Red Planet in scientists' hands here on Earth. The space agency is
now mulling those options and could announce its chosen path by early
next year, when the White House releases its proposed budget for fiscal
year 2014.

"The first public release of what plans, you know, we definitively have
would not be until the president presents that budget to Congress in
February of 2013," John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's
Science Mission Directorate, told reporters today.

NASA put together the MPPG this past March to help restructure its Mars
strategy in the wake of cuts to the space agency's robotic exploration
program.

The MPPG was instructed to consider NASA's newly constrained
fiscal situation and the priorities laid out by the U.S. National Research
Council's Planetary Decadal Survey, which was released last year. President
Barack Obama's directive that the agency get astronauts to the vicinity
of Mars by the mid-2030s was another factor, NASA officials said.

The MPPG's focus on sample-return should thus come as no surprise. It was
a top priority of the Decadal Survey, and sample-return could help spur
and work in concert with NASA's plans for human exploration of Mars, Grunsfeld
said. [7 Biggest Mysteries of Mars]

"Sample-return represents the best opportunity to find symmetry technologically
between the programs," he said. "Sending a mission to go to Mars and return a
sample looks a lot like sending a crew to Mars and returning them safely."

Humans could even be involved in the sample-return process, according to the
MPPG report. Astronauts aboard NASA's Orion capsule, which is currently under
development, could intercept the Martian sample in deep space, secure it in a
contained environment, and bring it safely down to Earth.

"It is taking advantage of the human architecture, because we anticipate it
will be there," Grunsfeld said. "And it potentially solves an issue of, when
we return samples, somewhere we have to make sure that the samples are
completely contained so there's no chance - remote as it may be - that there
is something on Mars that could contaminate Earth."

Exactly when a Martian sample could come down to Earth remains up in the air.
But NASA is considering launching the first enabling mission along this path in
2018, or perhaps 2020, Grunsfeld said. A complicating factor is that NASA has
just $800 million or so to work with for the project through 2018.

That's "not enough to encompass the rover options that we talked about," said
MPPG team lead Orlando Figueroa. "That drives you to either launching an
orbiter first, or delaying to the next opportunity, 2020, to start with a rover."

The report also provides a variety of options for gathering and returning Red
Planet samples.

For example, it could all be done with a single launch, which would carry
a soil-collecting rover, a vehicle that would blast the samples off the
Martian surface and an orbiter for sample rendezvous and return. Or these
payloads could be divided among two or three launches, to spread cost
and risk around, Figueroa said.

The MPPG report discusses lofting the single-shot mission as early as 2024,
aboard NASA's huge Space Launch System rocket. NASA wants the SLS to make
its first test flight by 2017 and to be ready to carry crews by 2021.

NASA's robotic Mars exploration strategy has already begun shifting from
"follow the water" - exemplified by NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers -
to searching for habitable environments, which the $2.5 billion Curiosity
rover is currently doing in the Red Planet's Gale Crater.

Sample-return is the logical next step in NASA's unmanned activities at
Mars, Figueroa said.

"This is really the search for evidence of past life," he said. "And the
options that we are putting forth is, What are the options that NASA could
have available to pursue it in the most aggressive way possible?"

NASA has two robotic Mars missions on the docket before the first step
toward sample-return would launch. The Maven orbiter is slated to blast
off next year to study the Red Planet's atmosphere, while a mission called
InSight will launch in 2016 to probe Mars' core.
Received on Tue 25 Sep 2012 06:59:00 PM PDT