4 min read
New Team to Assess NASA’s Mars Sample Return Architecture Proposals
Editor’s note: This web article was updated Oct. 24, 2024, to announce a new chair of the review team.
NASA announced Wednesday a new strategy review team will assess potential architecture adjustments for the agency’s Mars Sample Return Program, which aims to bring back scientifically selected samples from Mars, and is a key step in NASA’s quest to better understand our solar system and help answer whether we are alone in the universe.
Earlier this year, the agency commissioned design studies from the NASA community and eight selected industry teams on how to return Martian samples to Earth in the 2030s while lowering the cost, risk, and mission complexity. The new strategy review team will assess 11 studies conducted by industry, a team across NASA centers, the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. The team will recommend to NASA a primary architecture for the campaign, including associated cost and schedule estimates.
“Mars Sample Return will require a diversity of opinions and ideas to do something we’ve never done before: launch a rocket off another planet and safely return samples to Earth from more than 33 million miles away,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “It is critical that Mars Sample Return is done in a cost-effective and efficient way, and we look forward to learning the recommendations from the strategy review team to achieve our goals for the benefit of humanity.”
Returning samples from Mars has been a major long-term goal of international planetary exploration for more than three decades, and the Mars Sample Return Program is jointly planned with ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Perseverance rover is collecting compelling science samples that will help scientists understand the geological history of Mars, the evolution of its climate, and potential hazards for future human explorers. Retrieval of the samples also will help NASA’s search for signs of ancient life.
The team’s report is anticipated by the end of 2024 and will examine options for a complete mission design, which may be a composite of multiple studied design elements. The team will not recommend specific acquisition strategies or partners. The strategy review team has been chartered under a task to the Cornell Technical Services contract. The team may request input from a NASA analysis team that consists of government employees and expert consultants. The analysis team also will provide programmatic input such as a cost and schedule assessment of the architecture recommended by the strategy review team.
The Mars Sample Return Strategy Review Team is led by Maria Zuber, E. A. Griswold professor of Geophysics and presidential advisor for science and technology policy, MIT, and includes the following members:
- Greg Robinson, former program director, James Webb Space Telescope
- Lisa Pratt, former planetary protection officer, NASA
- Steve Battel, president, Battel Engineering; Professor of Practice, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
- Phil Christensen, regents professor, School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Tempe
- Eric Evans, director emeritus and fellow, MIT Lincoln Lab
- Jack Mustard, professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Science, Brown University
The NASA Analysis Team is led by David Mitchell, chief program management officer at NASA Headquarters, and includes the following members:
- John Aitchison, program business manager (acting), Mars Sample Return
- Brian Corb, program control/schedule analyst, NASA Headquarters
- Steve Creech, assistant deputy associate administrator for Technical, Moon to Mars Program Office, NASA Headquarters
- Mark Jacobs, senior systems engineer
- Rob Manning, chief engineer emeritus, NASA JPL
- Mike Menzel, senior engineer, NASA Goddard
- Fernando Pellerano, senior advisor for Systems Engineering, NASA Goddard
- Ruth Siboni, chief of staff, Moon to Mars Program Office, NASA Headquarters
- Bryan Smith, director of Facilities, Test and Manufacturing, NASA Glenn
- Ellen Stofan, under secretary for Science and Research, Smithsonian
For more information on NASA’s Mars Sample Return, visit:https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-sample-return
Dewayne WashingtonHeadquarters, Washington202-358-1100dewayne.a.washington@nasa.gov
Share
Details
Last Updated
Jan 17, 2025
Related Terms
Explore More
6 min read
NASA’s Webb Provides Crash Course on Planet-Shattering Collisions
Article
23 hours ago
3 min read
An Agricultural “Island” in the Saskatchewan River Delta
Surrounded by wetlands, Manitoba’s northernmost farmland near The Pas turns from green to brown over…
Article
1 day ago
4 min read
Powerful Storms Continue to Prowl the Pacific
Hurricanes Polo and Nolo sent destructive effects ashore amid an active season in the northeastern…
Article
2 days ago
Keep Exploring
Discover Related Topics
Mars Sample Return
Mars Sample Return would be NASA’s most ambitious, multi-mission campaign that would bring carefully selected Martian samples to Earth for…
Mars 2020: Perseverance Rover
NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover seeks signs of ancient life and collects samples of rock and regolith for possible Earth return.
Mars Science Laboratory: Curiosity Rover
Part of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission, at the time of launch, Curiosity was the largest and most capable rover…
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…
Source: NASA Science
