Mars Sample Return Mission-NASA/ESA circa 2018

[MeteorWayne]

From spaceflightnow:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1007/20sample/

Space officials in the United States and Europe are planning an ambitious dual-rover mission that could start collecting Martian soil samples in 2018 to be picked up by a subsequent mission and returned to Earth in the 2020s.

....

The costly mission would blast off on an Atlas 5 rocket in 2018 and land two rovers on Mars with a single "sky crane" descent system that will be tested for the first time at the Red Planet in August 2012.

It would be the first time two rovers will be delivered to the same landing site on Mars.

The European Space Agency's ExoMars rover and a $2 billion NASA Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Cacher mission are the leading candidates for the tandem project.

 

[rcsplinters]

Good read. It raises a couple of questions. Thinking back to the rovers, they each had a grinder to remove out layers of rock, presumably to remove any surface contaminant, oxidation, etc. Would storing the sample for such a lengthy period result in sort of contamination? Would they store under noble gases or vacuum while in in storage for what might be 2 or more years? This could be a minor consideration as the samples would have a lenthy transit in any case.

It's an interesting approach. I'd always rather assumed they'd land, gather the desired material and then leave. I never considered a multi-step mission. I think its good to have the multi-national cooperation too. There's some bugs in mission communication to deal with in those relationships. I remember Huygens problems because a data channel was lost due to simple miscommunication between the ESA and NASA. The more missions, the better things like that will become.

 

[3488]

Fascinating but very risky.

I assume both rovers (one each from NASA & ESA) will collect samples & place them in seperate canisters but placed side by side that the future sample return craft will retrieve & return to Earth.

Like the Phoenix Mars Lander type solar arrays on the NASA Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Cacher rover.

I would imagine that after samples have been collected by both rovers, the rovers could then continue MER type independent missions on their own???

Fascinating, but risky & certainly proves that a lot is riding on the Skycrane landing system for MSL Curiosity.

Selection of the landing site will be interesting as well as photos of each other on the martian surface, before they go their seperate ways.

Andrew Brown.

 

[3488]

Hi rcsplinters,

I would assume the storage canisters will either be filled to capacity, so therefore the samples will be in a contained environment detached from the martian weather, etc & / or the canisters will be 'airtight', i.e a good laboratory vacuum, so samples will not chemically weather, awaiting the return to Earth.

It is worth bearing in mind that at the mean surface level on Mars, the atmosphere is approx the same density as Earth's atmosphere is at 35 KM / 22 miles above sea level.

Andrew Brown.

 

[MarkStanaway]

A great concept and I hope it becomes a reality.
I saw no mention of payload mass for the sample return.
Are we talking grams or Kilograms?
Mark

 

[JonClarke]

The MAX-C rover would be the US component, and coollect the cache. More details can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Astro ... rer-Cacher

The ExoMars rover would be as is. Landing them both together is one idea, it's a risky one and it is not clear what benefit two very different rovers would have in the same location.

But a caching rover is a good idea IMHO. It provides a useful mission in the event the ascent vehicle fails, both before and after.

Sample masses are less than 1 kg I think, down to 100 g. But a suite of 10 X 10 g samples would be much more useful than 1 kg from a single spot.

 

[orionrider]

How does that fit in the proposed 2036 manned mission?
Wouldn't it be better to send rovers with an ascent stage to put the samples in orbit, where they can be retreived by the crew of the orbiting spaceship?

Or will the 2036 crew deploy and remote-control the sample-recovery robot?

 

[MarkStanaway]

As a comparison the last Soviet sample return mission to the moon, Luna 24 in August 1976, returned 176 gms of lunar regolith recovered by a flexible drill from a depth of 2.25m. The 260 cm flexible tube containing the sample was then wound around a 160cm column inside the return payload container.

See: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/luna24.html

 

[JonClarke]

How does that fit in the proposed 2036 manned mission?
Wouldn't it be better to send rovers with an ascent stage to put the samples in orbit, where they can be retreived by the crew of the orbiting spaceship?

Or will the 2036 crew deploy and remote-control the sample-recovery robot?

Unmanned sample return missions would be largely made redundant by any crewed mission. A crewed mission would return a much grwater mass of material of much greater diversity than an unmanned one.

Therefore unmanned sample return has always been seen as a precursor (or alternative) to crewed missions. Other than the pure science aspects, it would also allow quantification of hazards posed by Mars surface materials, development of infrastructure and proceedures to do with returning from the Mars surface, and would be subscale demonstrations of technology that might be used on a crewed mission.

 

[silylene]

While it is an interesting mission concept, I don't think the return mission to fetch the carefully obtained samples will ever get funded and launched.

Why? It will be expensive. The return mission would also need a rover to pick up the cannister. Some future NASA project manager or science budget panel will argue that it makes no sense to send an expensive third rover to the same landing location, when more knowledge could be learned by sending that third rover to a new location. And the future NASA project leader would argue that equipping the third rover with the ability to obtain new samples before returning is more cost effective since it would be exploring a new location too.

 

[orionrider]

Unmanned sample return missions would be largely made redundant by any crewed mission. A crewed mission would return a much grwater mass of material of much greater diversity than an unmanned one.

The 2036 manned mission will not land on Mars, just orbit and visit the moons. But they could remote-control robots on the surface in near real-time, and/or retrieve samples in Mars orbit to bring them home.

Why? It will be expensive. The return mission would also need a rover to pick up the cannister.

I don't like it either. It would be much more efficient for the collecting rovers to bring the samples to the ascent module(s) after it (they) arrive(s) on Mars. That is, if the rovers survive that long, like Spirit and Opportunity, AND maintain their mobility. Maybe that's what they intend to do. Send the 'return' mission to the rover that has collected the best samples and/or is in the best condition?

 

[JonClarke]

While it is an interesting mission concept, I don't think the return mission to fetch the carefully obtained samples will ever get funded and launched.

Why? It will be expensive. The return mission would also need a rover to pick up the cannister. Some future NASA project manager or science budget panel will argue that it makes no sense to send an expensive third rover to the same landing location, when more knowledge could be learned by sending that third rover to a new location. And the future NASA project leader would argue that equipping the third rover with the ability to obtain new samples before returning is more cost effective since it would be exploring a new location too.

You don't need three rovers. You just need to have one that can drive to the landing site.

Strictly speaking you don't need any rovers, although a sample collecting one is desirable. You could just drill or scoop up the surface material.

 

[JonClarke]

Unmanned sample return missions would be largely made redundant by any crewed mission. A crewed mission would return a much grwater mass of material of much greater diversity than an unmanned one.

The 2036 manned mission will not land on Mars, just orbit and visit the moons. But they could remote-control robots on the surface in near real-time, and/or retrieve samples in Mars orbit to bring them home.

That is just an idea. There is no committment to such a mission. I would hope we would have sample return by other means by then. Such a mission would probably best focus on collecting its own samples, to take advanatage of the capabilities of from orbit teleoperation and 25 years of more knowledge about Mars.

Why? It will be expensive. The return mission would also need a rover to pick up the cannister.

I don't like it either. It would be much more efficient for the collecting rovers to bring the samples to the ascent module(s) after it (they) arrive(s) on Mars. That is, if the rovers survive that long, like Spirit and Opportunity, AND maintain their mobility. Maybe that's what they intend to do. Send the 'return' mission to the rover that has collected the best samples and/or is in the best condition?

It is only a possible approach. I assume the collecting rover rationale is to collect the samples from a potentially immobilised MAX C. But it does introduce extra complexity for sure. If you are going to have a rover anyway onboard, you might as well have that collect the samples. So I think what you suggest is more probable.

 

[vulture4]

There is only so much information in a mineral sample, or a hundred samples, and miniaturized analytical equipment continues to improve. Return samples don't carry information about typography and relationships. Mars has as much surface area as Earth has land. It's hard to see how a sample return mission would be more valuable than sending more high-resolution orbital sensors and additional rovers to parts of the planet that would otherwise never be visited.