Written by Heba Al-Sayed Sunday, October 22, 2023 03:00 PM I achieved NASA agency There has been a string of successes in recent decades when it comes to missions to Mars, with the Spirit, Opportunity, Phoenix, Curiosity, InSight and Perseverance missions all landing successfully on the surface of Mars, but the agency’s upcoming plans for Mars represent a whole new level of ambition, as the Curiosity rover collects samples of Martian dust and rocks. As it travels, the goal of the Mars Sample Return mission is to return those samples to Earth.
The exact design of the mission has changed since it was first announced, but the current plan is to send a lander to the surface called the Sample Return Lander (SRL) and then have Perseverance drop samples onto that lander.
These samples will be loaded into a rocket inside the lander called the Mars Ascent Vehicle, which will launch into Mars orbit, where it will meet a spacecraft called the Earth Return Orbiter, which will return those samples to Earth.
This comes at a time when a rocket has never been launched from the surface of another planet, especially if landing on Mars is difficult, then taking off from it is even more difficult.
How does NASA plan to engineer its way around this problem?
The difficult part about trying to launch a rocket from another planet is that there are no launch pads on Mars. Launch pads provide a flat, stable surface on which the rocket can launch, and most importantly, it won’t spew out any material when the jets from the powerful rocket engines hit it.
Phil Metzger of the University of Central Florida, a launch pad expert with NASA, explained that when a rocket fires its engines with enough force to lift off from the ground, “the amount of energy you have to blast out the back is enormous.”
He added that when this energy hits the surface of Mars, which is covered with a dusty substance called regolith, the material that is ejected can cause serious problems and even damage the rocket itself, according to the Digitartlends website.
For example, a similar problem occurred during the landing of the Curiosity spacecraft. The descent stage carrying the rover had powerful engines around its edges. These exploded downward to slow the descent during the final stage of descent.
This worked great in getting the rover to the ground, but the force of the jet plumes threw up dust and small rocks with great force, hitting one of the rover’s wind sensors and disabling it as it descended.
Fortunately, the rover had a second wind sensor, so it was still able to take measurements, but the accident showed that landing on a dusty surface was no easy feat.
Another challenge is the stability of the ground beneath the vehicle as it descends, and as surface material is shed and eroded, rocket plumes can carve a hole in the planet’s surface.
The scale of the problem really depends on what lies underneath. For example, NASA’s Phoenix lander landed in the far north of the planet and blew away surface material to essentially land on a layer of ice, which served as the landing pad.
It worked, but when China’s Zurong spacecraft landed on Mars, its engines drilled a deep, narrow hole in the surface below the lander.
