NASA is Planning To Shuttle Rock Back from Mars

 Space  

While Curiosity is getting a software upgrade on the Red Planet, NASA scientists are already working on the details of the next Mars rover.  The next mission may involve a system to ferry Mars rocks back to Earth for study.

New NASA Mars Rover head, Ashwin Vasavada has an ambitious idea for a mission that will require multiple robots, a rocket lifting off from the surface of Mars and a spacecraft that will scoop up Martian rocks orbiting the Red Planet.

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Vasavada said scientists are working on a plan to not just send a rover to study rocks on Mars but are working to bring some of those rocks back to Earth so geologists can study them here.

Vasavada, a planetary scientist, has been the deputy project scientist for NASA's Curiosity rover since 2004. He has now taken over as the project head, succeeding John Grotzinger, who was at the post for seven years. Grotzinger is now chairman of Caltech's Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences but will remain a member of Curiosity's science team.

"In the future, we'll work to bring [Martian] rocks back to Earth," Vasavada told Computerworld. "I'm looking forward to that. Curiosity is about the most you can do sending tools to Mars. The next step will be to send rocks back to Earth."

Transporting the Martian rocks back to Earth will take a multi-staged plan that might take over a decade to complete.

"In the future, we'll work to bring [Martian] rocks back to Earth."

The next robotic rover is expected to be sent to Mars in 2020. It is being designed to hunt for signs of past life, as well as to make oxygen and rocket fuel on the Red Planet itself.

The next Mars rover is also being designed to collect rocks and soil samples and store them in a cache. The rover will leave that cache behind as it moves on to conduct other scientific studies on Mars. After that, another NASA mission will send a rocket and a smaller rover to the surface of Mars. That rover will pick up the cache of samples and put them on the rocket, which will launch itself and place those samples in orbit around Mars.

To wrap up the effort, another spacecraft will be launched for Mars that will grab the samples in orbit and bring them back to Earth, where scientists can study them firsthand.

Vasavada said the project is intended to be completed before NASA is expected to send humans to Mars in the 2030s.


SOURCE  Computerworld

By 33rd Square

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