Mars Sample Return got a new price tag. It ’s big

NASA’s audacious Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission has serious technical flaws and “unrealistic” assumptions about its budget and timetable, an independent review found in a report released yesterday . Originally estimated to cost some $4 billion, the reviewers found that NASA’s share of the mission could end up costing between $8 billion to $11 billion, and that launch could happen no sooner than 2030, 2 years later than now planned. A joint project between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), MSR would gather rocks collected by the Perseverance rover, which has been drilling samples since it landed on Mars in 2020. MSR would then rocket the samples off the planet and ferry them to Earth, where scientists would study them for signs of past life and planetary evolution. The top priority of planetary science for several decades, it remains a worthy goal and one still worth pursuing, especially in light of similar sample return plans for Mars planned by China for later this decade, according to the review report, which was commissioned by NASA. But NASA won’t get there without dramatically rethinking how it runs the program and accepting the true cost. “MSR was established with unrealistic budget and schedule expectations from the beginning,” the report says. “As a result, there is currently no credible, congruent technical, nor properly margined schedule, cost, and technical baseline that can be accomplished wit...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research