On Wednesday, NASA announced that it had made major changes to its plan to return samples from the surface of Mars in the early 2030s. Currently being collected by the Perseverance rover, the samples are scheduled to be brought back to Earth by a relay of rovers and rockets Now, inspired by the success of the Ingenuity helicopter, NASA says it may lose one of the rovers, replacing it with a pair of helicopters.
The plan to return the samples from Mars involves a large collection of challenges, but a central one is that the samples are currently on Perseverance, but must eventually end up on a rocket that lifts off from the surface of Mars . That means Perseverance will have to get close enough to the rocket’s landing site, which we can’t precisely choose, to exchange the samples, possibly diverting it from science targets. It also cannot be too close when the rocket lands, as the landing of the rocket and its associated hardware can pose a risk to the rover and its samples.
The original plan included a contingency. Perseverance would approach after the rocket had landed, and the samples would be transferred directly. If that didn’t work for whatever reason, a second rover sent to Mars by ESA would act as an intermediary, visiting a place where the samples had been cached, retrieving them, and then delivering them to the rocket.
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In the new plan, this second rover has been removed. Instead? Two helicopters. These will be delivered as part of the same payload as the rocket carrying the samples into orbit. As a result, the new plan includes only a single landing (beyond what Perseverance delivered) that will carry both the rocket and the helicopters, significantly reducing the risk of the overall plan.
These helicopters will naturally be based on the Ingenuity design, which was sent to Mars as a test vehicle and significantly exceeded expectations, completing 29 flights over the course of a year. Based on this experience, NASA is confident that helicopters can be designed to carry small payloads and potentially complete multiple flights between the return rocket and where the samples are located, either on Perseverance or at a memory location it falls
After that, the plan remains the same. The samples will be loaded into a container placed on the Mars Ascent Vehicle designed by NASA to take them into orbit. There, the container will be transferred to the ESA-built Earth Return Orbiter, which will bring them back to Earth in 2033, at which time they will fall through the atmosphere for recovery and study.
The next step will be approval by ESA, after which both agencies will begin the preliminary design phase, which will take care of all the details of the various vehicles that will be needed. Meanwhile, Perseverance has already collected a dozen samples from the red planet’s surface.