Mars Sample Return Options

[tanjent]

I know it sounds very cynical, but given the technical difficulty and risks of automated sample retrieval coupled with the tendency of the budgeting process to embed large giveaways to politically influential contractors who then fail to meet their deadlines, it may make sense to slow down the spending of tax dollars on the problem and instead wait for a privately sponsored mission to bring the samples back. Of course at that point, there would be other samples available from other locations.

Enough said (probably more than enough, but at least I have left out the forbidden word beginning with m).

[StargazeInWonder]

For ~$8B, how much volume and distinct sampling sites makes the effort worth it. Certainly not a single grain of sediment nor a single chip of rock.

I read this section as the review committee making a recommendation on the minimum mass and diversity of the collected samples that would make the expense worth it. That is a key driver of the entire effort.

What's odd to me about the 500 g quantity mentioned three times in the Figueroa report is that it discards the other key variable that you mention, diversity.

I don't know what the minimum mass is of a sample that permits an assay of that sample that would answer the questions that we sent the craft there to answer. Surely not a chip, but it must be not much more than 20 g, or else each of the tubes would be pointless individually and we'd have to pool them into one pot to get any results.

It seems obvious that four, say, ideally-chosen samples of 25 g each, totaling 100 g would be far preferable to one poorly chosen igneous sample that predates the lake and weighs 500 g. It's this variable of diversity and selectivity that is ignored when "500 g" becomes the only descriptor mentioned.

A detective at a crime scene wouldn't be weighing potential clues and determining their value by mass. A fingerprint's value is the information in it, not its mass.

Some of the spicier publications about Mars meteorite ALH84001 indicate that specific chemical results were based on subsamples weighing 0.3 to 1.7 g each. That seems like a meaningful start to quantifying value. A destructive test that requires, say, 2 g, would mean that we'd certainly want several times that amount of material per subsample. A semi-full Perseverance tube would allow analysis, but at ~10 times the mass required for analysis, it's on the edge between adequacy and comfort.

Obviously, more is always better, but more diverse and more selective are also better. A metric that only mentions mass and ignores the considerable quality that was put into the selection of those tubes seems odd.

[mcaplinger]

"Down to" and "up" don't apply with Phobos. The escape velocity is 40 km/hour. That's a nudge, not a launch.

Consider how tricky the OSIRIS-REx mission was with similar constraints, and it was just grabbing an unprepared sample.

Unless you're talking about something that would sit on Phobos, quiescent, for a decade and then launch itself up to an orbiting spacecraft. Which also sounds pretty difficult.

[mcaplinger]

wait for a privately sponsored mission to bring the samples back...

Despite all the hype from some quarters, you might have a long wait.

[StargazeInWonder]

Remember at the height of the Cold War, the first images from the surface of the Moon were published by the British, who intercepted and decoded the radio transmissions by the Soviet Luna 9.

Which suggests the possibility that Perseverance's samples could be picked up by any space agency and brought back to Earth. There are no police on Mars to prevent China, say, from bringing them back. That might be poor optics in terms of international cooperation and prestige, but it might light a fire under some planners if they thought about the fact that they could botch things badly enough to let that occur.

[Explorer1]

Intercepting radio transmissions is a tad easier than Mars sample return!
Though it would be an absolutely fascinating court case, I strongly doubt that it will come to that (and presumably the unveiling of Tianwen 3 will be enough fire lighting, I'd really like to know what sort of MAV they have)....

It would be wonderful to have samples from two different regions of Mars returned to Earth in the 2030s, regardless of who is first. End of story.

[stevesliva]

Despite all the hype from some quarters, you might have a long wait.

Similar thoughts have me wondering if the complicated architectures are sisyphean "light and fast" and what's needed is "siege tactics" (to steal some mountaineering terms.) But the current caching presumes continued "light and fast" in that there's not like 6 wildly oversized caches, all of which would suffice.

Missions that managed to launch doubles, like Voyager and MER are notable for their rarity, and also sort of demonstrate that when one succeeds, the other probably will.

Constraining the amount of money this will cost is extremely difficult either way.

[StargazeInWonder]

The news about NASA's Mars sample return is now about budgets and politicians what happens with upcoming mission development is going to be a waiting game while budgets are determined.

I guess there are roughly three possible paths:

1) Steep funding cuts, staffing is slashed, and MSR is potentially pushed indefinitely into the future.
2) Operations continue apace as though a workable plan were already underway.
3) Enough funding is provided to keep staffs retained while a whole new plan is developed.

We may have some dry years ahead.

[vjkane]

The news about NASA's Mars sample return is now about budgets and politicians what happens with upcoming mission development is going to be a waiting game while budgets are determined.

I guess there are roughly three possible paths:

1) Steep funding cuts, staffing is slashed, and MSR is potentially pushed indefinitely into the future.
2) Operations continue apace as though a workable plan were already underway.
3) Enough funding is provided to keep staffs retained while a whole new plan is developed.

We may have some dry years ahead.

There are two problems.

First is what flow of funding the political system is willing to provide? It appears that huge buckets of $s up front is out, but NASA doesn't know what the sustainable level will be yet

Second is that several parts of the design, in particular the orbital capsule and how many samples it will carry, are technically immature and for a rushed program puts the entire program at risk

It appears that NASA is presuming a much smaller annual funding flow. Over the next year, they will re-architect the program to match what they expect. In parallel, they will use funds available this year to mature design of critical systems.

[rlorenz]

Remember at the height of the Cold War, the first images from the surface of the Moon were published by the British, who intercepted and decoded the radio transmissions by the Soviet Luna 9.
Which suggests the possibility that Perseverance's samples could be picked up by any space agency and brought back to Earth. There are no police on Mars to prevent China, say, from bringing them back.

Why would the Chinese want to steal those samples?
I think (personal opinion only) that the planetary community went along with the Mars community's stance (not a universal one - I for one would like to see a meteorological network, and an Ice-mapping radar isnt a bad complement to what we have with the existing, but ageing, fleet...) in the 2012 Decadal Survey of 'Sample Return above all else' with some sort of mental picture of 'well, obviously the samples will be a priori very exciting, like they have high organic content, or textures reminiscent of stromatolites...'. I dont believe the current Perseverance sample suite, for all their petrological value etc., fulfils that fantasy.

A better bet for China would be to try an entirely new location, rolling the dice for a higher astrobiology score. The prior sample encapsulation in tubes isn't that big an advantage, the Chinese have already demonstrated the ability to acquire regolith samples on the Moon.

[John Whitehead]

I was sorry to learn of the disaster at JPL two weeks ago, somewhat expected but still a shock. I can relate to the pain, stress, and disillusionment, having myself been through a layoff at a contractor-operated government lab in 2008. This year, three contributing factors came together.
1. Technical difficulty of MSR underestimated, hence cost and schedule too optimistic.
2. Entire federal budget in limbo, more than a third of the way into the fiscal year.
3. As the only contractor-operated NASA center, JPL suffers disproportionately.

Ironically, my own mid-life job change came after I steered my career toward trying to help with MSR. In 2005-2007, NASA funded some of my lab work toward implementing launch vehicle technology on a tiny scale, for launching samples from Mars. The funding did not continue, despite technical progress. Ideally, recent decades would have included more effort on all the new technical challenges unique to MSR, without having compromised funding for all the tremendous successes that did occur for Mars science.

Hopefully brighter days and years are ahead. The quality, quantity, and diversity of the core samples collected by Perseverance should be compelling, to sustain the effort. Sedimentary rock from Mars has got to be well over ten times as valuable as asteroid samples (OSIRIS-REx cost over one billion dollars). In addition to science, MSR should be prioritized for the sake of national prestige.

[Floyd]

From LA Times Link
From JPL Link

[StargazeInWonder]

A familiar situation with a lot of details but nothing clear.

I've posted these here because Mars Sample Return is the big budget item, but there are many other programs mentioned, including Veritas.

https://spacenews.com/final-nasa-2024-spend...on-msr-funding/

https://www.aol.com/news/budget-deal-nasa-o...-214010430.html

[StargazeInWonder]

This is light on details, but provides status updates at a high level suggesting that China's MSR is on-track.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/art...behind-schedule

[mcaplinger]

This is light on details...

Talk is cheap, and there are essentially zero details here -- nothing on implementation and not even anything about the specific goals of the mission (how many samples, selected how, etc, etc.)

It's fairly obvious that a simple grab sample that doesn't require a rover could be done more cheaply, especially with less rigor in meeting PP requirements. Not to mention the structural advantages of not having multiple NASA centers, international cooperation, and all the other things that constrain the NASA effort (tiptoeing around rule 1.2 here.)

A little more detail, but not much, as of 2022 in https://spacenews.com/china-aims-to-bring-m...sa-esa-mission/