New Space and Tech

NASA Plan to Shoot and Ship Samples of the Red Planet on Hold

By Leonard David

SpaceRef

November 28, 2023

Filed under Mars Sample Return, NASA

NASA Plan to Shoot and Ship Samples of the Red Planet on Hold — NASA Perseverance rover is now on Mars and busily collecting samples, storing the specimens in tubes, then depositing those tubes on the surface for later pick-up.

Image credit: NASA.

NASA’s mega-project of scooping up and transferring specimens of Mars to our planet is under intense scrutiny and has been put on pause.

The plan, which never looked easy, called for a NASA-built Sample Return Lander (SRL) housing a Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) and a robotic arm provided by the European Space Agency.

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Leonard David

Leonard is author of Moon Rush: The New Space Race, Mars – Our Future on the Red Planet, and co-authored with Apollo 11’s Buzz Aldrin of Mission to Mars – My Vision for Space Exploration - all published by the National Geographic Society.