The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has not concluded when and how to proceed with its project to return soil samples from Mars to Earth.
Bill Nelson, Director General of NASA, held a briefing on the 7th (local time) and disclosed the progress of the Mars soil sample return program.
This program is an mission to bring back soil samples collected by the Perseverance rover, which arrived on Mars in February 2021. Currently, the only samples available for research on Mars are Martian rocks that have fallen to Earth in the form of meteorites. If Perseverance can bring back rock samples it has directly collected from Mars, it is expected to find evidence of the planet's history and possible signs of life.
Perseverance has already collected rock, dust, and air samples at Jezero Crater as examples of Mars, and has stored them in 30 tubes. It only needs to retrieve these sample tubes from Jezero Crater.
However, this program is currently on hold due to excessive expense issues. NASA had originally planned to invest $5 billion (about 7.2745 trillion won) into this program, but a review revealed that the mission's costs have increased to $11 billion. The timeline for bringing the Mars soil samples to Earth has also been pushed back from 2033 to 2040. Ultimately, NASA has embarked on a comprehensive review of the program.
By the second half of last year, NASA received a total of 11 revised program proposals. In a briefing on the 7th, NASA noted that two of these programs could be realistic alternatives. The first candidate involves using the 'Sky Crane' technology that landed Perseverance on Mars in 2021, while the other involves using launch vehicles from private corporations like Blue Origin or SpaceX to send a lander to Mars. NASA plans to reduce the size of the lander that will travel from Martian orbit to the surface in order to lower the expense of retrieving the samples.
Nicola Fox, Deputy Director General of NASA, said, "The reason for presenting both options is ultimately to provide a scientific achievement of Mars sample analysis for everyone."
NASA did not determine specific methods during the announcement. Director General Nelson noted that the funding and support levels necessary to retrieve Mars samples should be decided by the next U.S. administration, led by Donald Trump, and the U.S. Congress, taking a step back. Jared Isaacman, who has been nominated by President-elect Trump as the next NASA Director General, has not publicly stated his position on the retrieval of Mars samples.
Victoria Hamilton, a planetary geologist at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, noted in an interview with Nature, "The retrieval of Mars samples has been considered a top priority for U.S. planetary science for decades, and the academic community hopes this mission will get underway soon," adding that "it is disappointing that future plans have not been confirmed."
The likelihood of China surpassing the U.S. in retrieving Mars samples has also increased. China is expected to embark on a project to bring Mars samples to Earth as early as 2031. As NASA's decision regarding the Mars sample retrieval program is delayed, it is highly likely that the program will proceed later than China's. In the U.S., it is anticipated that retrieval of Mars samples may not be possible until the mid-2030s at the earliest.