United States Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to launch a sample delivery mission from Mars to Earth in 2033, or two years later than a similar Chinese mission.
China itself is known to want to bring samples from Mars to Earth in 2031. The mission, which will begin in 2028, is said to use a simpler architecture than the NASA project in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), with one probe landing.
Meanwhile, NASA and ESA will conduct missions involving two landings, but in the same area.
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The joint mission involved the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), a small and light two-stage solid propellant rocket tasked with carrying blast rock, sediment and atmospheric samples.
Collect Spacethe MAV currently being developed by Lockheed Martin’s Space of Littleton in Colorado will be coupled with NASA’s Sample Retrieval Lander (SRL), a probe that will make a major contribution to the sample return mission.
The two-in-one, MAV and SRL spacecraft will land near or at Jezero Crater, where NASA’s Perseverance rover is already working on collecting Martian samples.
Then a second probe, carrying the European Space Agency’s (ESA) fetch rover, will land in the same area as well. The fetch rover will later bring samples from Perseverance to the MAV.
Once the samples are collected, the rocket will be launched into Mars orbit, where ESA’s Earth Return Orbiter (ERO) will pick up the container containing the sample.
ERO will then transport the sample to Earth, and issue it via the Earth Entry System (EES) to make a high-speed, parachute landing in the Utah desert, United States (US) in 2033.
The sample return capsule was also designed by weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin. The capsule is made of a lightweight composite structure, enveloped by a special thermal protective material provided by NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California.
Steve Sides, Lockheed Martin’s senior program manager for Mars Vehicle Integrated Systems (MAVIS), said humanity had never before taken a pure sample from Mars and brought it to Earth. Therefore, there are significant challenges facing the team that is trying to make it happen.
Miss China
On the other hand, China boasts that it will first send samples from Mars to Earth in 2031. Sun Zezhou, chief mission designer of the Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter and rover, presented a new mission profile for China’s Mars sampling.
He outlined plans for a profile of two launches, which will lift off in late 2028 and deliver samples to Earth in July 2031. Eurasian Timesthe first landing on Mars is scheduled to occur in September 2029.
After that there will be surface sampling and drilling. Sampling, possibly using a four-legged robot, will use the technique mobile intelligent sampling.
The craft will then leave Mars orbit in late October 2030 and will return to Earth in July 2031.
(lom/lth)
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