NASA despatched out the Perseverance rover to Mars to gather samples, however it now wants assist to convey them again.
Whereas the house company had plans to get samples from Mars again to Earth, its unique plan doesn’t appear that interesting now.
Therefore, NASA’s preliminary plan is now on maintain till there’s a greater and quicker strategy to convey these samples again.
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When the Perseverance rover first went out a couple of years in the past, it landed in the course of the Jezero Crater.
That was a website the place there was beforehand a lake.
It was the proper place to gather samples to substantiate any signal of life that existed up to now.
To date, it has 24 samples in its stock.
The rover did its job completely there and even shared a number of photographs of the pink planet’s floor.
However now there’s the issue of bringing them again to our residence planet.
NASA’s unique plan was too costly and would take too lengthy.
How a lot does it value, you say?
The previous plan’s finances was set at $11 billion.
Not solely that, however it might take the samples one other 16 years to land again on Earth if NASA follows the unique plan.
Now, the thought of discovering a greater strategy to retrieve these samples begins to make sense.
“We’re taking a look at out-of-the-box potentialities that might return the samples earlier and at a decrease value,” Nicola Fox, head of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, stated in a press assertion.
He added, “That is positively a really bold objective.
“We’re going to wish to go after some very revolutionary new potentialities for design, and definitely go away no stone unturned.”
However what was the house company’s unique plan?
The overall thought was to fireplace two rockets — one orbiter rocket and one other a lander — at Mars.
Primarily, the lander rocket would land on the pink planet’s floor, the place the Perseverance rover stashed samples.
There, it might launch one other rover to load the take a look at tubes onto a smaller rocket inside the large one, then hearth away to achieve Earth.
As advanced as it might appear, NASA will seemingly not proceed with this plan.
Different house companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX are additionally engaged on Mars missions and may help NASA with this mission.
Some photos used on this story had been generated utilizing AI.
