Scientists will have to wait a little longer for pure samples of Mars that may contain evidence of ancient life on the red planet.
NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are working together to return dozens of samples from Mars to Earth, which are being collected by NASA. perseverance rover At the bottom is Jezero Crater, which is 28 miles (45 kilometers) wide. NASA officials said Jezero would be an ideal place to do such work, because billions of years ago it was home to a large lake and river delta, and potentially a tempting habitat for life.
The Initial plan He called for the 2026 launch of a return lander (SRL) carrying NASA’s Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) and a recovery craft made by the European Space Agency. The rover will search for a container containing the persistence samples and return them to the MAV, which it will launch into orbiting Mars. There, the sample container will be transferred to the ESA Earth Return Orbiter (ERO), which will return the material to Earth in 2031.
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NASA announced today (March 28) that the plan has changed a bit.
“Detailed analysis of the SRL landmass requirements led NASA to adopt a dual landing structure, with the second lander carrying the European Recovery Vehicle,” NASA officials wrote in a statement. Description of the agency’s assignments in the White House’s 2023 Federal Budget Request. This request, which has yet to be approved by Congress, Gives NASA $26 billion For the fiscal year 2023, which begins on October 1.
“Developing a second landing craft requires moving to a 2028 launch date and a 2033 model return date and complies with Mars sample returns the independent review boardThe (IRB) discovered that a dual landing structure could improve the probability of mission success.”
The ORE launch has also been pushed back, from 2026 to 2027, according to budget documents.
The budget request allocates $822 million for revenue from the March sample in fiscal year 2023, up $169 million for the project over last year’s request. The increase does not occur in a vacuum. NASA officials wrote in the budget document that this “stresses the rest of the planetary science portfolio and could affect the balance of the portfolio in the coming years.”
For example, the additional money now required to return samples from Mars was a factor in NASA’s decision to postpone the launch of the NEO mission by two years, at the earliest in 2028, and to halt funding internationally. Ice Mapping Project on MarsAgency officials wrote.
Mike Wall is the author of “the leastA book on the search for extraterrestrial life (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; Illustrated by Karl Tate). Tweet embed. Follow us on Twitter Tweet embed or on FB.