Work is advancing on a vital part of NASA’s Mars sample return plans.
The Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) is a small, light, two-stage solid propellant rocket with a big task: rock blast, sediment, and atmospheric samples. Mart in the early 2030s, in the first rocket launch from the surface of another planet.
The MAV, which is developing Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, will be packaged with NASA’s Sample Retrieval Lander (SRL), another important part of the sample return campaign. The two-in-one spacecraft, MAV and SRL, will land near or in the Jezero crater, the place where NASA Rover of perseverance he is already busy collecting samples from Mars. A second landing, carrying a European Space Agency (ESA) “research rover”, will also land in the same area.
Related: Mars samples from the Perseverance rover will now not reach Earth until 2033 at best
The search robot will bring the Perseverance samples to the MAV. The rocket will be launched into Mars orbit, where ESA’s Earth Return Orbiter (ERO) will take its container full of samples. The ERO will then transport the samples to Earth, ejecting them through an Earth Entry System (EES) for a high-speed, parachute-free landing in the Utah Desert in 2033, if all goes according to the plan.
This sample return capsule, also designed by Lockheed Martin, is made of a lightweight composite structure, surrounded by a special thermal protection material provided by NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California.
Humanity has never returned to pristine samples of Mars before, and there are major challenges facing the team that is trying to make it a reality, said Steve Sides, senior program director at Lockheed Martin for the integrated system of Mars Ascension Vehicles (MAVIS) based in Huntsville, Alabama.
Artistic illustration of the two-stage Mars Ascension Vehicle (MAV) heading into Mars orbit with samples collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover. (Image credit: NASA)
Aim, aim and shoot
The MAV is less than 10 feet tall and 1.5 feet in diameter (3 by 0.5 meters), Sides told Space.com. “It ‘s relatively small rockethe said, “so aim, aim and shoot.”
Lockheed Martin Space provides NASA with multiple MAV test units and one flight unit. Work under contract includes designing, developing, testing and evaluating the integrated MAV system and designing and developing the rocket ground support equipment.
The fixed-cost MAVIS contract has a potential value of $ 194 million and will run for six years. The clock is ticking. The SRL-MAV duo is currently scheduled to launch in 2028 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, beginning on long walk to the Red Planet.
“The goal is to land there at the beginning of the year and take off earlier [Martian] winter hits, ”Sides explained.
Related: NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover takes the eighth rock sample on the red planet
A rocket drill is launched into the air at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, using a VECTOR system or a controlled vertical ejection launch. The ascent vehicle to Mars will use a similar strategy. (Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech)
Loft and light
A new aspect of the MAV design is the use of a gas-generated concept: a vertically ejected controlled dump release, or VECTOR for short. It is a loft and light technique led by NASA engineers Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which is building the SRL.
The MAV will carry about 30 sample tubes, which will be loaded from the search rover to the rocket by the robotic arm of the SRL. The MAV will then be launched into thin Martian air, approximately 18 feet (5.5 m) above the landing that serves as the launch pad. At that point, the engine of the first stage of the rocket will start, Sides said.
“Launching a rocket and bringing it to light has been done before, but never on Mars,” Sides said. The VECTOR approach minimizes backtracking and interference with the SRL, he explained.
Once the ignition occurs, the rocket launches it into the orbit of Mars. “Ultimately, the MAV reaches about 4,000 meters per second [8,950 mph, or 14,400 kph] to reach the escape velocity of Mars, “Sides said.
After the separation of the first stage, the rotation motors of the second stage are activated to stabilize the still burning stage and then rotate downwards. “We’re going to cost 10 to 15 days,” Sides said. During this time, a beacon from the upper stage will transmit its whereabouts for encounter and capture by a system aboard the ERO.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover stores samples of rock and soil in sealed tubes, which will be retrieved and sent to Earth. (Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech)
Early and concrete step
“We’ve never launched a rocket since Mars, so there’s a lot of technology here,” Sides said. “But we’ll also get a lot of science from these samples from Mars.”
In fact, the return of samples from Mars has been on NASA’s to-do list for decades. “It’s hard, but the technology and the time to do it are right. We just have to go do it,” Sides said. “I wouldn’t put him in the easy category … but I wouldn’t put him in the‘ unobtainium ’category,” he added. “Now we have the capacity.”
Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator of science at NASA’s Washington headquarters, told a statement from the agency (opens a new tab) in February that committing to the MAV represents “an early and concrete step to delve into the details of this ambitious project not only to land on Mars, but to take off.”
Pieces and pieces
Those pieces and pieces of Mars will land in one fell swoop in the Utah desert.
To test the return sample of the Mars sample, engineers have conducted a series of drop tests at the Utah Test and Training Range, the site of the lake bed where the samples will land.
During recent testing, a manufacturing demonstration unit (MDU) of a potential design for the EES aeroshell was made. fallen from an altitude of 1,200 feet (opens in a new tab) (365 m), giving it time to reach the expected landing speed.
“The MDU was very stable during the descent: it didn’t move much and landed successfully, in the sense that there was no structural damage and it survived the impact as expected,” said Jim Corliss of the NASA, head of the Mars sample return EES. engineer, he said in a statement from the agency in April (opens in a new tab).
“We are nearing the end of the conceptual phase of this sample return mission to Mars, and the pieces are coming together to take home the first samples from another planet,” Zurbuchen said in the February statement. “Once on Earth, they can be studied with state-of-the-art tools too complex to transport them into space.”
Leonard David is the author of the book “Moon Rush: The New Space Race,” published by National Geographic in May 2019. David has been a writer for Space.com for more than five decades and has been a reporter on the space industry. follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in a new tab) or activated Facebook (opens in a new tab).