Mars Soil Sample Return Mission Advanced

Credit NASA JPL

The next steps for NASA at Mars should be a soil sample return a internal MARS PROGRAM PLANNING GROUP (MPPG) SUGGESTS IN A REPORT released by the space agency this week. The strategy should build toward returning Martian rocks and dirt to Earth to search for signs of past life by laying out a series of options that NASA could employ to get pieces of the Red Planet in scientists' hands here on Earth. The space agency is now mulling those options and could announce its chosen path by early next year, when the White House releases its proposed budget for fiscal year 2014.

Possible Mars soil sample return

NASA also hopes to establish a "GATEWAY SPACECRAFT" at the far side of the moon, that will serves as a staging area for manned missions beyond Earth's orbit, the Orlando Sentinel reported recently, citing internal NASA documents.

NASA put together the MARS STUDY TEAM in the wake of budget cuts recently made to the Mars robotic exploration program and in consideration the priorities laid out by the U.S. National Research Council's Planetary Decadal Survey in 2011 which included a Mars soil sample return among the highest priorities. The space agency also took into consideration President Barack Obama's April 2010 directive to get astronauts to the Mars or its moons by the mid-2030s. Humans could even be involved in the sample-return process, according to the MPPG report. Astronauts aboard NASA's Orion capsule, which is currently under development, could intercept the Martian sample in deep space, secure it in a contained environment, and bring it safely down to Earth.

Exactly when a Martian sample could come down to Earth remains uncertain. But NASA is considering launching the first enabling mission along this path in 2018, or perhaps 2020. A complicating factor is that NASA has just 800 million or so to work with for the project through 2018.

Orion astronauts at Mars?

The MPPG report discusses lofting the single-shot mission as early as 2024, aboard NASA's huge Space Launch System rocket. NASA wants the SLS to make its first test flight by 2017 and to be ready to carry crews by 2021. "POPULAR SCIENCE" explains a ROBOT-TO-HUMAN hand-off in space of a Martain soil sample.

NASA will launch a robotic explorer that will analyze the Martian atmosphere next year. In 2016, the agency will launch a small lander that will analyze the Martian interior. But deep budget cuts have forced NASA to bail out of more ambitious joint Mars missions with the European Space Agency in 2016 and 2018.