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Mars NASA

NASA Picks Lockheed Martin To Build Rocket To Carry Mars Samples Back To Earth (space.com) 70

Posted by BeauHD from the ambitious-projects dept.
NASA on Monday announced that it has selected the aerospace company Lockheed Martin to build the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), a small rocket that will launch pristine Red Planet samples back toward Earth a decade or so from now. Space.com reports: Mars Sample Return is a joint effort of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). The project is already well underway, thanks to NASA's Perseverance rover, which landed on the Red Planet in February 2021.The six-wheeled robot has collected a handful of samples thus far and will eventually snag several dozen more, if all goes according to plan. The next big steps are scheduled to come in the mid-2020s, with the launch of two additional missions -- the NASA-led Sample Retrieval Lander (SRL) and ESA's Earth Return Orbiter (ERO).

SRL will deliver an ESA "fetch rover" and the MAV to the Martian surface. The fetch rover will carry the collected samples from Perseverance -- or the spot(s) where Perseverance has cached them -- to the MAV, which will then launch them into orbit around the Red Planet. A container holding the samples will then meet up with the ERO, which will haul it home to Earth, perhaps as early as 2031. Once the samples are down on the ground, scientists in well-equipped labs around the world will study them for signs of ancient Mars life, clues about the planet's evolutionary history and other topics of interest, NASA officials have said. [...] The newly announced MAV contract has a potential value of $194 million, NASA officials said in today's statement. The contracted work will begin on Feb. 25 and run for six years. During this time, Lockheed Martin will build multiple MAV test units as well as the flight unit. "Committing to the Mars Ascent Vehicle represents an early and concrete step to hammer out the details of this ambitious project not just to land on Mars, but to take off from it," Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters, said in a statement. "We are nearing the end of the conceptual phase for this Mars Sample Return mission, and the pieces are coming together to bring home the first samples from another planet," Zurbuchen added. "Once on Earth, they can be studied by state-of-the-art tools too complex to transport into space."
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NASA Picks Lockheed Martin To Build Rocket To Carry Mars Samples Back To Earth More

NASA Picks Lockheed Martin To Build Rocket To Carry Mars Samples Back To Earth

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  • Your tax dollars at work.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      For a FP, that was pretty weak.

      • Re: Cost Plus (Score:4, Interesting)

        by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @02:14AM (#62251757)
        What will be pretty weak is having SpaceX land their Starship on Mars in 2025 while Lockheed Martin announces another delay and cost overrun, stating they will be behind by three years.
        • People will be living on Mars by the time that rocket gets there

          • People will be living on Mars by the time that rocket gets there

            Uh huh. Check beachk with us in 3 years. One of the strange things about you and the rest of the cult is that you crow any successes, your deity has, yet completely ignore his failures. It's so weird - it isn't cognitive dissonance, it's faith in a god.

            Sad part is, Musk has done some cool stuff and no doubt. But he's in the mode of Edison, while y'all worship him like the cult of Nikolai Tesla worships their deity.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by kwerle ( 39371 )

          A Starship on Mars in 2025 seems pretty unlikely. If you figure a 7 month travel time then that means a launch around the end of the first quarter of 2025. That's just 3 years off, and SpaceX hasn't even scheduled the manned lunar orbit mission.

          I'd bet you a dollar SpaceX doesn't make Mars before 2027

          • Re: Cost Plus (Score:4, Interesting)

            by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @03:10AM (#62251819)
            Bet accepted. I willing add you as a friend. Orbit does not count. Any vehicle made by SpaceX. RUDs dont count. 12/31/2027 is the end of bet (or successful landing). Return not required.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by eth1 ( 94901 )

              Bet accepted. I willing add you as a friend. Orbit does not count. Any vehicle made by SpaceX. RUDs dont count. 12/31/2027 is the end of bet (or successful landing). Return not required.

              I'd add a side bet that regardless of when SpaceX gets to Mars, they'll beat Lockheed to bringing anything back.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by kwerle ( 39371 )

              You'll note my email address (etc) are clearly visible.

          • Furthermore, Hohmann transfer [wikipedia.org] windows only open every 26 months. To make it to Mars by the end of 2025, you'd need to launch no later than 2024-09-26 [clowder.net] with the minimum amount of propellant. If you miss that window, the next opportunity won't be until a 2027-07-30 arrival.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by kwerle ( 39371 )

              Thanks for the pointer!

              It's lookin' a lot like I'm gonna be $1 richer come the end of 2027!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Did SpaceX bid on this contract? There must be a reason why NASA didn't select them if they did.

          • SpaceX does not have a track record of such complex missions. Compared to this "voyage to Mars, take sample boxes, voyage back to Earth" launching Falcons is easy.
            Also, SpaceX does not have a large enough engineering team to do everything they already promised.
            On a more personal note, Elon Musk is overpromising on delivery dates. I think he is doing great, or even more than great - but he is still overpromising on delivery dates.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              That's almost certainly it. NASA looked at SpaceX's team and the engineering work that needed to be done, and decided that Lockheed Martin was more likely to deliver it.

              The timescale is rather long though. I think there is a good chance that China will manage to do a sample return before then. It's such a shame that NASA can't work with them, together they could reduce costs and speed up the timetable.

              • The new space race is the only positive of the forcibly manufactured utterly unnecessary new cold war with China. China's Tianwen-2 is scheduled to return Mars samples in 2030, NASA/ESA are 2031, and the competition is the only thing keeping both schedules from slipping for many years with nobody caring.

                • Im just waiting for china to declare mars belongs to them and threaten war on earth if anyone dares threaten their sovereignty. As soon as they plant a flag, just wait for it.

              • To be fair, SpaceX could probably have a successful design (and product) with less engineering effort. Yet, that is still a solid "maybe", and at that price, NASA wants a "yes".
                Also, SpaceX will base their "Earth to Mars" vehicle on a launch on Starship - which might be great but is missing. So, all in all, 50+ years of proven engineering record versus a possibly cheaper project built on unknowns.

                As for track record for space vehicles, the StarMan with its Tesla space vehicle is already inoperable.

            • SpaceX does not have a track record of such complex missions. Compared to this "voyage to Mars, take sample boxes, voyage back to Earth" launching Falcons is easy. Also, SpaceX does not have a large enough engineering team to do everything they already promised. On a more personal note, Elon Musk is overpromising on delivery dates. I think he is doing great, or even more than great - but he is still overpromising on delivery dates.

              This - so much this.

              You'll be pilloried for this, but it's true. There really isn't anything special about the Falcon 9/heavy. Other than the landings, which is mostly aided by modern technology, rocketry is pretty mature technology, with tweaks here and there.

              And the landings, while the MuskPress still has an orgasm every time it happens, are by now rather boring.

              And that statement is coming from a rocket slut.

              But yes - getting a rocket to Mars, nailing a pinpoint landing, then collecting the samp

              • See the James Webb Space Telescope - over 600 possible points of failure, and until now everything is fine.
                SpaceX is not overengineering for the last 1% or so. This is great as they got incredible cost cuts.

                • See the James Webb Space Telescope - over 600 possible points of failure, and until now everything is fine. SpaceX is not overengineering for the last 1% or so. This is great as they got incredible cost cuts.

                  Can you tell me exactly how much refurbing a Falcon 9 first stage costs, and if it is still less expensive when the fleet of recovery vessels capital costs, fuel, staffing and transportation are in there before the fisrt stage even enters the refurbishment facility?

                  I hear that this is incredible - But is it? I cannot get any actual in-house costs, much less all the other costs involved.

                  Now just between us chachalacas, that number appears to be a closely guarded secret - other than us just being told

            • Everybody knows Elon Musk has no freakin' clue WHEN things are going to happen with SpaceX. He fantasizes a date, and the gullible take his word for it, then the date mysteriously changes as the time approaches. I do wish he could cork himself sometimes, but he is who he is.

              I think SpaceX is doing terrific work, but just wish Musk would stop saying, "we'll be doing this by such and such date," because it just makes the nay-sayers start fapping away with glee every time he does it.

              • Does anybody have a link to a good source that is compiling all of Musk's announcements for SpaceX (at least), perhaps similar to the KilledByGoogle site? Between SpaceX rebasing history every time a schedule changes, and WIkipedia edits by fanbois it is hard to keep track of how Musk's claims for those of us not dedicated to doing it as a project.

                I would like to have Musk's earliest claimed date for a Mars landing handy when that date sails past.

                • I don't know of anybody that keeps a compiled list, but that would be interesting to see. Earliest I recall was non-manned landing on Mars by 2025, but that was quite some time ago. Not sure what hilariously inappropriate guess he'd have at this point, since they've stalled out even getting to the orbital launch through red-tape and lawsuits.

                  It would really be interesting to talk to the engineers actually working on the Starship project to get their perspective. I would think they would have much more re

        • What will be pretty weak is having SpaceX land their Starship on Mars in 2025 while Lockheed Martin announces another delay and cost overrun, stating they will be behind by three years.

          Silly boy, Musk's brave Astronauts have been on Mars since 2016, having landed their Crew Dragon Capsule. The renamed planet "Musk" is well on their way to his statement that there will be a million people their in 48 years (2050).

  • Reusable (Score:5, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @02:24AM (#62251775)

    How are we getting to Mars .. it better be on a reusable launcher. NASA should require full re-usability from all future rockets. I am not paying those fools to make disposable rockets. Note when I say re-usability I don't mean fake-reusable like the space shuttle which requires a $200 million "refurbishment" between launches. I mean re-usable like an airplane is re-usable

    Why the heck are we paying $2 billion per rocket for SLS? That is fucking insane. Fuck. Even a billionaire won't waste money on a disposable Rolls Royce. I guess he would if taxpayers were paying for it.

    • Re:Reusable (Score:5, Insightful)

      by monkeyxpress ( 4016725 ) on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @04:26AM (#62251875)

      I am not paying those fools to make disposable rockets.

      As I've gotten older, I've realised that most participants in the economic system are not trying to optimise for the highest productivity or best products. Most of the successful participants have figured out that you can game almost all the markets for much less effort than creating true innovation. It's basically mexican drug cartel economics. I mean, even Peter Theil - who is a self-professed champion of libertarianism - basically says that you should try to corner markets and form monopolies; even he doesn't believe in the power of competition to drive human progress and innovation.

      So really the question you should be asking is why is Elon Musk so hell bent on reducing the cost of access to orbit? Why doesn't he just sit back with his big fat slice of the space launch market and enjoy his billions? That is literally what most CEOs are happy to do. Unfortunately the answer to that question is rather elusive, but it seems to come from an internal drive to just do 'stuff' that most are lacking.

      • I don't have mode points, so I'll just agree with you emphatically. Though I would add that the line between "gaming" the market and innovating in a market is not even a clear thing. It's an inherent aspect of the system.

        • "why is Elon Musk so hell bent on reducing the cost of access to orbit"
          He used to do maintenance on the fireboxes of some furnaces, lasting for 15 minutes at a time - and that job paid some $16 per hour.
          He's now so filthy rich that he's only doing what he wants, everything else be damned.
          Tesla, SpaceX, ... are his drugs, and he's unable to "get free".
          Or those are his dreams, and he's going full blast to reach them.

      • Lots of people have internal drives to "just do stuff", but most of us call them hobbies. He's also not in it for the money, the money is just one of many tools needed to be able to do this stuff.
      • I cant speak directly for him, but I can speculate. He is about my age, I was born a little before him but not by a lot. We were born during the lunar missions. Space speculation was a big thing everywhere you looked. Most of my childhood coloring books were about astronauts, how they ate, what a lunar colony might look like. Then came that fateful day in May 1977, when Star Wars debuted on the big screen. While nothing like real space travel it did not stop the imagination from souring. If we are ever goin

      • I am not paying those fools to make disposable rockets.

        As I've gotten older, I've realised that most participants in the economic system are not trying to optimise for the highest productivity or best products. Most of the successful participants have figured out that you can game almost all the markets for much less effort than creating true innovation. It's basically mexican drug cartel economics. I mean, even Peter Theil - who is a self-professed champion of libertarianism - basically says that you should try to corner markets and form monopolies; even he doesn't believe in the power of competition to drive human progress and innovation.

        So really the question you should be asking is why is Elon Musk so hell bent on reducing the cost of access to orbit? Why doesn't he just sit back with his big fat slice of the space launch market and enjoy his billions? That is literally what most CEOs are happy to do. Unfortunately the answer to that question is rather elusive, but it seems to come from an internal drive to just do 'stuff' that most are lacking.

        Watching Musk at his presentations, you can see he is getting a huge head rush from the cheering throngs. I'm guessing the endorphin buzz is just about overwhelming. My favorite example is during his announcement of his battery big tractor. He showed a 1990 style animation of his truck's acceleration versus a standard big tractor. The crowd was screaming yelling, clapping, cheering. All magnitudes out of proportion to the little animation showing something that isn't even all that important in the trucking

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by eth1 ( 94901 )

        So really the question you should be asking is why is Elon Musk so hell bent on reducing the cost of access to orbit? Why doesn't he just sit back with his big fat slice of the space launch market and enjoy his billions? That is literally what most CEOs are happy to do. Unfortunately the answer to that question is rather elusive, but it seems to come from an internal drive to just do 'stuff' that most are lacking.

        He's answered this question before. The purpose of SpaceX is to get people (himself, actually, I think) to Mars. Their commercial launch business is just to fund the R&D to get them there, and to your question, reducing the cost to orbit is essential to that goal. This is why SpaceX isn't a publicly traded company - their mission isn't really to make a profit for investors, and going public would force them to do that.

      • You guys are kidding, right?

        Elon Musk is getting the price to orbit down so that he can put as many of his Starlink satellites in orbit as he wants, at will, and eventually dominate the Internet. The game up there is making him money and advancing science now, but it's ultimately about the game down here.

    • Why the heck are we paying $2 billion per rocket for SLS? That is fucking insane. Fuck. Even a billionaire won't waste money on a disposable Rolls Royce. I guess he would if taxpayers were paying for it.

      Well... Musk did launch his Tesla Roadster into space [whereisroadster.com].

    • The F-14 used to use around 40 to 60 maintenance hours per flight hour (still cheaper to win an air fight and dump hundreds of hours on maintenance afterward than to lose the air fight and build a new F-14).
      The space launchers (first stages, second stages, boosters, ...) have a much higher penalty for additional mass and fly under higher stress. As such, expect a lot of maintenance after every flight, even for fully reusable platforms.

      • I dont ever remember seeing an abundance of interceptors in the hangar bay during deployment due to maintenance. There were not that many onboard to begin with. We only had 2 or 3 S3 sub hunters, a few helo, 2 of the planes with the dish on top for command control, a cargo plane that took care of shipments of mail and parts delivery, a few squadrons of hornets, and a squad of EA6B for their EMP jamming ability. With that much downtime ratio it would not seem sustainable. Maybe 2:1 given that they seemed to
        • (In 2003)

          "The F-14 is currently the most expensive aircraft to operate in the Navy inventory, requiring 40 to 60 maintenance manhours per flight hour. For comparison, the F-18 Hornet requires only 20 hours of maintenance and the latest F-18E/F Super Hornet requires just 10 to 15 hours. These high maintenance costs played a large role in the Navy's decision to move the retirement of the F-14 up from 2010 to 2006. "

  • is this opposed to the samples aliens pissed all over?

  • During the Apollo program they quarantined the Apollo astronauts when there was a very low risk of biological contamination. Mars currently may have microscopic life, the risk is orders of magnitude greater. If the organism can survive in our biosphere, no animal on Earth would have antibodies for it. They are putting the whole ecosystem at risk. If you want to study samples from Mars do it at L5 or on the Moon until you know that it's safe. NASA use to be smarter that this. We are just getting through on

    • The whole immune system is set up to identify foreign. We make antibodies for unknown stuff, it is stuff that looks like us that we can't handle.I reckon it is the organism that is at the disadvantage. An organism evades the immune system by knowing how to tamp it down. Even the covid virus has multiple genes dedicated to tampering with the immune system. How would an alien organism know how to do that?

      • I think we can rule out space virus. Bacterium is a different scenario altogether. Virus need a host. Since the best case for life is pockets of bacterium, I see no scenario where a virus could thrive given the lack of host.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        > immune system is set up to identify foreign. We make antibodies for unknown stuff

        But as pandemics show, it's far from perfect. I agree that the analysis labs should be in orbit or on the moon.

        While the risk is small, it's not zero. We are dealing with highly unknown life forms. Let's play it safe and quarantine the sample lab off Earth.

    • Seems highly unlikely. For billions of years, Earth has been getting seeded with rocks from Mars via Mars meteorites. Not a lot, probably a handful of rock each year, but it is happening and has been happening for a very long time. Unless you are in the Fred Hoyle camp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_from_Space), earth diseases do not come from space or Mars.
    • Correct me if I am wrong but antibodies are for virus, whereas white blood cells fight the microorganisms like bacterium. There is no vaccine for strep throat / scarlet fever. A virus would need something larger than bacteria to invade and virus often lack dna making their definition of lifeform debatable.

  • By then SpaceX will have it's astronauts just put the samples in their pockets and bring them back using their starship.
    But as others pointed out, a complete waste of taxpayers money as that simple project will spin completely out of controle in regard to budget.

    • "as that simple project will spin completely out of control"
      You'll need to launch the "Mars device" (including the return trip rocket) at the equivalent of some 19 km/s for a successful Mars landing.
      The 50 calibers machine gun shoots bullets at 1.2 km/s.
      Could we do better? Yes, the depleted uranium antitank rounds of the M1 tank reach 1.55 km/s.
      Could we get even faster? The electromagnetic guns of the future Navy combatants shoot tin cans at speeds of 2.5 km/s.
      What about the end-all, be-all hypersonic missi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Entrope ( 68843 )

        The escape velocity from Earth is 11 km/s, not 19. Mars's is only 5.

        But more fundamentally, nobody tries to hit escape velocity in one go. Atmospheric drag saps too much energy. Even ignoring that, it's technologically much easier to use sustained acceleration to climb out of the gravity well more slowly.

        • You don't need to escape Earth gravity well, you need also to "climb" in Sun's gravity well too. And you need to slow down once you reach Mars, where there isn't much of an atmosphere.

          And, once you launch from Mars you need to "descend" into the same solar gravity well - even though you could bleed extra speed by aerobraking in Earth atmosphere.

          The post was rebuking the ""simple project" assumption of the parent.

          • The average pull of the sun at Earth orbit is 0.0059m/s^2 and 0.0027m/s^2 at Mars orbit, so that's trivial in terms of fuel cost compared to Earth's 9.8m/s^2 and Mars' 3.71m/s^2 of surface gravity.

            • Yes, and the difference in orbit radius between Earth and Mars is 62 million kilometers.
              Earth gravitational acceleration reaches the 0.006 m/s^2 at some 250,000 kilometers (1/2000 part).

      • I meant, ofcourse that the end budget will be like 10 to 20 times larger as planned, just look at the fiasco of SLS..
    • Its literally our biggest innovator of technology for everything outside communication. Look at all the things we have as a result of the space program. Even MRI and CAT scans are based on technology specifically designed for the space program. Its the one area that keeps us from stagnating in a world that only innovates to generate more Ad revenue while selling us the same dish soap from 1960.
    • Huh. I think the mars missions have in recent decades been a real bright spot for the US space program. Maybe I am using a pre-SpaceX frame of reference. But still our efforts with unmanned probes have made good progress, even as the manned program ground to a near halt.
  • And it was a good one that used processes that we know work for getting things from Mars to Earth. Huge explosions! If an asteroid strike can send stuff flying from Mars all the way to us, just think how well some big-ass nukes would work!
  • Five years late and $10B over budget - LOL - and SpaceX will get the Mars long before.
    • By the time this happens $10B wont be worth much. A millionaire will be middle class at the rate our inflation is going. 15T national debt. Only way to wipe that out is to devalue till a cup of coffee costs $100
  • Hey faithful!

    HEre's something for you to digest. https://www.orlandosentinel.co... [orlandosentinel.com]

    On the last two Spacex Dragon flights, only three of the 4 parachutes did not deploy in a timely fashion.

    It's a fact that Space work is dangerous, and that Spacex is subject to failures and problems just like those companies you love to dump hate on.

    But you would think in a world where we're constantly reminded how Spacex is landing yet another candle, we'd hear a little more about them skirting disaster.

    • Hey faithful!

      HEre's something for you to digest. https://www.orlandosentinel.co... [orlandosentinel.com]

      On the last two Spacex Dragon flights, only three of the 4 parachutes deployed in a timely fashion.

      It's a fact that Space work is dangerous, and that Spacex is subject to failures and problems just like those companies you love to dump hate on.

      But you would think in a world where we're constantly reminded how Spacex is landing yet another candle, we'd hear a little more about them skirting disaster.

  • "a small rocket" that will bring the samples to the ESA's Earth Return Orbiter "which will haul it home to Earth". So really just a small cog in the complex machine that would bring samples back. The "contract has a potential value of $194 million" which is chicken feed in the scheme of things. Probably a single stage solid rocket, much easier to achieve orbit from Mars than Earth.

  • Sorry, but traditional aerospace companies have a long track record for taking their sweet time building things and spending a lot more than is necessary. Meanwhile, the political landscape will change multiple times and the project will likely get shelved.

  • Expect some kind of microbe to get into the samples on the way there or back and the headlines to read:

    "Martian life found ! And it closely resembles earth life !"

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