NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have agreed to “significant and beneficial changes” to an important part of the conceptual design for the Perseverance mission, NASA associate Thomas Zurburchen said in a recent announcement. This car-sized rover is the newest member of NASA’s robotic fleet on Mars and arrived on the Red Planet in February 2021 via an unprecedented landing. Arguably one of its most important responsibilities is the Mars Sample Return campaign. Perseverance’s six wheels leave grooves in the planet’s regolith as it works toward that goal, traversing Mars’ Jezero Crater to collect telltale sedimentary evidence that water — and possibly life — once existed there. NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took this image on March 17, 2022. Here it looks back at its wheel tracks on Mars on the mission’s 381st Martian day or day.NASA/JPL-Caltech In October, the space agencies will dive into the details of their redesign: instead of Perseverance leaving caches of its collection of pebbles on the surface of Mars for another unbuilt ground spacecraft, the existing Mars rover. he will be the one to carry the precious parcels to their launch site. In addition, Perseverance’s robotic companion, the Ingenuity helicopter, has inspired the design of two future rovers that will deviate from the Martian soil to take more samples. This duo would be part of an existing concept, NASA’s Sample Retrieval Lander. The next steps will be carried out by two other established concepts. ESA’s sample transfer arm would pick up the tubes that hold the samples and put them on NASA’s Mars rover for a journey through the atmosphere. The rocket will carry the soil samples from the Martian surface to an ESA spacecraft known as the Earth Return Orbiter (ERO), which will then fly back to Earth and drop them off for landing and retrieval. NASA’s Ingenuity Mars lander took this photo during its 20th flyby on February 25, 2022. This view from Ingenuity’s high-resolution color camera shows the northwestern part of an area, the “Séítah” area. NASA/JPL-Caltech Agency officials said they are proposing this “advanced mission architecture” because they have determined that persistence will last longer than once thought. The recovery is currently scheduled to begin sometime near the end of 2027, according to the NASA announcement. By giving Perseverance a new gig, NASA and ESA can skip building the intermediate robot they had originally dreamed up—the Sample Fetch Rover—that would have been built by ESA. Representatives from the 22 European nations of the continent’s space exploration program, Terrae Novae, got a look at this sophisticated concept in May. The announcement goes on to say that the states “will consider stopping development of the Sample Fetch Rover” in September. A month later, the new plans are about to start being implemented. LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY.
