The task of Mars Sample Return has always been a costly, high-risk, and high-reward project. However, now, with the realization of the actual cost of the mission and the expanding timeline, Congress must fully commit to supporting these efforts or risk undermining NASA’s entire planetary science program.
Mission Success and Increasing Costs
The Mars Sample Return mission aims to collect samples of Mars rocks and soil from Jezero Crater, which is believed to have been submerged in water billions of years ago, and send them back to Earth. So far, NASA’s Perseverance rover has collected 23 out of 38 planned samples and has left them in capsules on the Martian surface for retrieval. From there, the details point to uncertainty, but current plans require a NASA-led sample retrieval vehicle in the future to carry two small helicopters and a rocket to capture these capsules and launch them into Mars orbit, where there will be another component of the Mars return mission led by the European Space Agency (ESA) waiting to receive and return them to Earth.
Financial and Timeline Challenges
The estimated cost to complete this multi-phased Mars Sample Return mission ranges from $8 to $11 billion, which is somewhat comparable to the cost of the JWST project. The independent review committee for the MSR mission issued its recommendations in September 2023, stating a “near-zero probability” of launch in the 2027 to 2028 timeframe as initially planned. It is now being considered for launch in 2030, which is overly optimistic. The committee also indicated that to achieve this date, the mission would require an additional $1 billion per year for three years or more starting in 2025 – and this news comes amid Congress’s failure to secure a complete budget for 2024. The response committee plans to develop a revised architecture by next March, and in the meantime, NASA has slowed the pace of work on the mission as of November 2023.
Impact on the Planetary Exploration Program
It may be wise to remind planners of the recent JWST history. The main problem it faced during its early years of development was a lack of funding that led to delays and cost overruns – a result of the poor practice of deferring work in future years to stay within low annual budget commitments, according to the comprehensive independent review committee of JWST. NASA may fall back into this scenario with MSR if it struggles to secure adequate funding during the project’s development phase. Its uncertain and escalating costs could lead to delays in other planned missions even after its launch.
Budget Challenges and Their Impact on Other Exploratory Missions
Budget uncertainty has led NASA to announce a one-year delay in the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan; a three-year delay in the Veritas mission to Venus; and a three-year postponement of the request for proposals for a new planetary science mission under the New Frontiers program. With delays come threats of losing valuable talent. You can also look at NASA’s tentative Mars timeline. There aren’t many developments until the mid-2030s at best. Although JWST has been criticized as the “telescope that ate astronomy,” the project’s issues did not halt NASA’s entire astronomy program. During the development of JWST, the agency carried out a servicing mission for the Hubble Space Telescope and launched the Spitzer, Fermi, and Kepler space telescopes, all of which were groundbreaking missions.
NASA’s Reasonable Goals for Mars Exploration
What is NASA’s reasonable goal for Mars exploration, given the rising costs of MSR and its inevitable delays? If the aim is to be the first to return a sample from Mars, NASA is on a losing path. China is planning to launch its own Mars sample return mission, Tianwen-3, in 2028, with a Mars arrival in 2030 and a return to Earth in 2031. If the goal is to better understand the potential for past and present life on Mars and the prospects for humans there, NASA could redirect its resources and talent to ensure the success of the Rosalind Franklin mission instead, as well as plan a series of smaller, lower-cost missions to Mars – drills, balloons, or new-generation helicopters based on the success of the Ingenuity helicopter currently flying on Mars. During a meeting at NASA headquarters in March 2023, Eric Ianson, NASA’s Mars Exploration Program Director, expressed this strategy to launch relatively low-cost missions in the range of $100 to $300 million every two years when Earth and Mars are at their closest point to each other.
Threat
The Budget for the Planetary Exploration Program
Working under the threat of cancellation, as happened with the JWST team, is frustrating for the employees. However, the budget threat to the MSR mission, in the context of a continuous flow of missions, is a blow to the broader planetary exploration program and its supporting workforce. If Congress does not properly fund MSR now with enough room for concurrent exploratory missions, then returning a sample from Mars may only be one of many achievements realized by China – not only on the Red Planet but throughout the wider solar system.
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