Scientists will have to wait a bit longer for samples from Mars that could contain signs of ancient life on the Red Planet.
A sample-return lander (SRL) with a NASA Mars ascent vehicle (MAV) and an ESA-built fetch rover was scheduled to fly in 2026. The fetch rover would retrieve Perseverance's samples from a container and return them to the MAV, which would send them into Mars orbit. The sample container would then be transferred to an ESA Earth-return orbiter (ERO) in space, where it would be returned to Earth in 2031.
However, there's been a change of plans, according to a new NASA announcement on Mar. 28.
NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are collaborating to bring several dozen Mars samples back to Earth, which are being collected by NASA's Perseverance rover on the bottom of the Jezero Crater's 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer) surface.
According to NASA officials, Jezero is an ideal location for such research since billions of years ago it was home to a large lake and a river delta, both of which could have provided attractive habitats for life.
"Detailed analysis of SRL landed mass requirements has led NASA to adopt a dual-lander architecture, with the second lander carrying the European-provided fetch rover," NASA officials wrote in a description of the agency's allocations in the White House's 2023 federal budget request. This budget, which must yet be approved by Congress, allocates $26 billion to NASA for the fiscal year 2023, which begins Oct. 1.
"The development of a second lander necessitates a move to a 2028 launch date and 2033 sample return date and is consistent with the Mars Sample Return Independent Review Board's (IRB) finding that a dual-lander architecture may improve the probability of mission success," they added.
According to the budget documents, the ERO's launch has been pushed back from 2026 to 2027.
In fiscal year 2023, the budget request funds $822 million to Mars sample return, an increase of $169 million over the previous year's request. The increase isn't happening in a vacuum; it's "placing pressure on the rest of the Planetary Science portfolio and may impact the portfolio's balance in future years," according to NASA officials.
The additional funding now required for Mars sample return, for example, was a factor in NASA's decision to postpone the launch of its NEO (near-Earth object) Surveyor mission by two years, to no earlier than 2028. This had also discontinued funding for the international Mars Ice Mapper project agency officials said, per Space.com.
