Trump Takes the Helm: A Bold New Approach to Martian Rock Retrieval by NASA

NASA requires assistance in retrieving rocks from Mars, and on Tuesday, agency representatives declared that they have yet to make a conclusive decision on the matter. Instead, they are deferring the final choice to the forthcoming administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump.

However, the officials indicated that they have determined a potential method to launch the mission and return those Martian rocks to Earth more expediently by minimizing the mission’s size and weight, referred to as Mars Sample Return. Cost projections from the previous year had escalated to nearly $11 billion. With the changes, Mars Sample Return remains costly, but would be under $8 billion.

“That’s a significant reduction from $11 billion,” Bill Nelson, NASA’s administrator, commented during a telephone press conference on Tuesday.

Returning Martian rock and soil samples to Earth ranks among the principal objectives of planetary researchers. Although orbiting spacecraft and rovers on Mars’s surface have made considerable discoveries, their functions are restricted. By examining fresh rock samples closely with the advanced, powerful tools in their laboratories, scientists could unveil enigmas regarding the red planet’s history, including whether life may have ever emerged there.

The initial phase of Mars Sample Return has already commenced. NASA’s Perseverance rover, which touched down on Mars in 2021, has been drilling and collecting cylindrical samples of rock and soil in Jezero Crater, an area that features an ancient river delta.

The following steps of the plan, orchestrated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, require a sophisticated sequence of actions. To start, a new robotic spacecraft would descend near the Perseverance rover, which would then transfer around 30 of its rock samples for launching into orbit around Mars. Another spacecraft from the European Space Agency would then retrieve those samples, transport them back to Earth, and deposit them inside a small disk-shaped vehicle that would land in a Utah desert.

This plan remains mostly unchanged; however, the critical realization was that the rocket to launch the samples from Mars’s surface into orbit did not need to be as large and heavy as originally conceived.

With a more compact rocket, NASA was no longer required to develop a lander larger than any it had ever constructed before.

Conversely, the mission could once again utilize the sky crane system, which successfully deployed the Curiosity and Perseverance robotic rovers currently studying Mars. The sky crane mechanism lowers the lander with the rocket via cable from a hovering rocket stage.

NASA officials have also kept open the possibility that rather than using the sky crane, the agency might procure a lander from a private company.

Mr. Nelson, who will resign as NASA administrator with the presidential transition later this month, stated that NASA officials under Mr. Trump’s administration would likely be able to reach a decision sometime next year.

“Our goal was to provide them with the best possible alternatives so they can proceed from this point,” Mr. Nelson remarked.

Nonetheless, he also indicated that to prevent further delays in the program, it would require Congress to allocate at least $300 million this year.

Like many of NASA’s grandest initiatives, Mars Sample Return seeks to achieve something unprecedented, rendering it challenging to estimate the complexity and expense involved.

Initially, the two spacecraft needed for the mission — the lander constructed by NASA and an orbiter made by the European Space Agency for returning the rocks — were scheduled to launch in 2026, with NASA’s contribution costing $3 billion.

An independent evaluation in 2020 determined that a 2028 launch timeline was more feasible, with costs ranging from $3.8 billion to $4.4 billion. A subsequent review in 2023 concluded that these forecasts had been overly optimistic. NASA’s share of the mission has instead escalated to $8 billion to $11 billion, the panel stated. Consequently, agency officials concluded the rocks would not arrive on Earth before 2040.

“We shut it down,” Mr. Nelson noted.

NASA subsequently pursued alternative proposals from aerospace firms as well as insights from within the agency, starting anew on an innovative mission or recommending improved methods to execute a specific aspect of the current approach.

A cohort within NASA assessed the various options and proposed amendments that are revisions rather than a total rework.

“We’re genuinely enthusiastic about this,” remarked Nicola Fox, the associate administrator for NASA’s science mission directorate. “As always, my primary focus is to identify a way forward for our sample return within a well-rounded overall scientific program to ensure NASA’s research continues to yield results.”

One spacecraft could potentially launch as soon as 2030, followed by the second in 2031, according to Dr. Fox.

Additional adjustments include transitioning from solar panels to a radioactive heat source for energy, as well as simplifying the process of transferring the rock samples from Perseverance to the rocket designated to launch them into space.

Following NASA’s announcement of its pursuit for fresh ideas, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory decelerated its progress on Mars Sample Return and in February of the previous year laid off over 500 employees, approximately 8 percent of its labor force.

NASA officials did not reveal specifics about any of the commercial options. From the initial proposals, NASA had commissioned research from eight companies, which encompassed aerospace giants such as Lockheed Martin and two newer rocket firms spearheaded by billionaires — Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.

Mr. Musk has emphasized the goal of sending Starship, his next-generation vehicle, to Mars, pledging to dispatch uncrewed versions of that rocket toward that destination as early as 2026. Nevertheless, Starship is still under development and has yet to complete an orbit around Earth.