NASA has designated Johnson Space Center as the home for the agency’s Mars Sample Return Project office that is to receive and archive samples of the red planet currently being gathered and cached by the Perseverance rover at Jezero Crater.
Once returned to Earth in 2033, the samples will join those gathered by the Apollo astronauts at the Moon and those from other destinations, including comets, asteroids as well as stardust and meteorites of Martian origin curated by Johnson’s Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office.
Perseverance, which touched down at Jezero with the Ingenuity drone helicopter on Feb. 18, 2021, arrived equipped to collect 43 rock, regolith, Martian atmosphere and so-called witness samples in total. Perseverance is currently caching 10 duplicate samples from the Martian surface that are preserved in six-inch titanium tubes at a site called Three Forks.
The caching, which began Dec. 21 and is expected to take two months to complete, will serve as a backup for the samples Perseverance is to continue to gather and store on board the rover itself.
NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are partnering to develop a complex multi-element Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission that is planned to include the launches of a European Earth return orbiter, a NASA Sample Return lander with an ascent vehicle in a sequence planned to begin in late 2027 and continuing to unfold into 2028.
The Three Forks cached samples will serve as a backup if Perseverance is unable to meet up with the Sample Return lander and ascent vehicle. The cached samples at Three Forks could be gathered by a pair of drone helicopters with an Ingenuity heritage delivered by NASA’s Sample Return Lander and flown to the NASA ascent vehicle for delivery to ESA’s Earth return orbiter as it circles Mars.
The orbiter’s NASA-provided Capture, Containment, and Return System and Earth Entry System is to deliver the samples from Mars orbit to Earth for a descent and recovery planned for 2033.
“With our expertise, we look forward to managing the project that will receive scientifically compelling Mars samples gathered by the NASA Perseverance rover,” NASA’s Vanessa Wyche, JSC’s director, stated as part NASA’s Jan. 23 NASA announcement. At Johnson the samples will be preserved for distribution to global research experts prepared to assess the materials with the latest laboratory technologies for evidence of past Martian life.
Working with the agency’s Mars Exploration Program, JSC personnel will help to develop a strategy for recovery of the samples and their transition to researchers.
