In the space race between the United States and China, a winner will not be proclaimed until one of the two powers sets foot on Martian soil. However, there are a number of intermediate goals that either country could achieve first. Among them, bringing samples from the red planet.
Context. The recovery of Martian soil samples is an unprecedented achievement that the United States was, until recently, well on its way. NASA’s Perseverance robot has been collecting rock cores for four years and depositing them in a series of sealed tubes that it leaves around Mars. Right now there are 27 tubes with Martian air and soil waiting to be collected in a future recovery mission and return to Earth.
What there is not a defined plan to do it because, last year, NASA decided paralyze the development of the Mars Sample Return mission in an attempt to contain its budget, which threatened to reach $11 billion, more than double what was expected. The immediate consequence of this decision was that China overtook the United States in the race to recover Martian samples.
The Chinese Tianwen-3 mission consists of two spacecraft scheduled to launch in 2028. One will land on Mars, drill into the ground and take off again into Martian orbit. Another will collect the samples in orbit and bring them back to Earth by 2031. The United States, for its part, has the samples carefully selected and collected, but has no plan to go find them.
Two architectures. After a few months studying alternatives, NASA has just announced a new approach to deciding how it will bring samples of Martian rocks and sediments from the Perseverance rover to Earth. In search of the most efficient and lowest-cost option, the agency will simultaneously analyze two architectures to land on Mars, public and private:
- Sky Crane: This technology, already tested on NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance missions, was developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to stop the landing of Martian rovers with the retrorockets of a platform dubbed the “celestial crane.”
- A commercial ship: The other option is to turn to the private sector to develop an entirely new way to land on Mars or take advantage of a commercial spacecraft, such as SpaceX’s Starship, to transport a vehicle to the Martian surface.
The final decision on which of the two paths will be taken is expected in the second half of 2026. That the commercial option is Starship cannot be taken for granted (the American company Rocket Lab has proposed an architecture of “barely” 4,000 million dollars), but let’s remember that Elon Musk wants to send the first five Starships to Mars in 2026, and repeat the move in 2028 (unbeatable deadlines, if they are met in the tycoon’s time).
The good news for Europe is that the rest of the mission follows the same approach as always: NASA’s Mars Ascent Vehicle will take off to Martian orbit with the samples and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Earth Return Orbiter will bring the container to Earth.
Why are these samples important? Beyond the symbolic value of bringing back the first samples from Mars, analyzing rocks and sediments in Earth-based laboratories could revolutionize our understanding of the geological history of Mars and give us clues about whether there was ever life on the red planet, as well as understanding why. Our neighbor became the inhospitable wasteland with hardly any atmosphere that it is today.
Image | NASA/JPL
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