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Perseverance Promoted to Sample Return Rover, NASA to Send More Helicopters to Mars

In the first years of next decade, humanity should have in its grasp the first ever purposely fetched pieces of Mars. A series of missions collectively known as Mars Sample Return Program will help achieve that, and several more exciting details about it were shared this week by NASA.
Revised Mars Sample Return mission upgrades Perseverance's role 6 photos
Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Image shows tube in Perseverance's drill with rock samplePerseverance collects 9th sample on MarsPerseverance collects 9th sample on MarsPerseverance collects 9th sample on MarsPerseverance collects 9th sample on Mars
The Sample Return idea works pretty simply: samples of Martian soil are to be collected, then retrieved and taken off the planet, then sent back to Earth. But, as usual in space exploration, what is simple on paper is very complicated in terms of hardware.

The mission, as originally stated, required first and foremost a rover meant to gather the samples. That’s Perseverance, and it’s already on site doing its thing. Then, a Sample Fetch Rover would have been needed to take Perseverance’s samples and drive them to a Sample Retriever Lander that holds the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV).

The MAV would carry the samples into Martian orbit, where an Earth Return Orbiter would take hold of them and bring them back to Earth.

Now, after finishing the system requirements review for the program, NASA simplified things a bit. There will no longer be a Sample Fetch Rover, and neither the secondary lander needed to deliver it to Mars. Its mission will instead be passed to Perseverance, which will not only gather the samples, but will also return them to the MAV.

After seeing the success of the Ingenuity helicopter (29 flights to date), NASA will send two more of them (evolutions of the current design) on the Red Planet to aid Perseverance as “secondary capability to retrieve samples cached on the surface of Mars.”

As per the current timetable, the Earth Return Orbiter is expected to launch in the fall of 2027, while the Sample Retrieval Lander, which carries the MAV, in the summer of 2028. The first samples are expected back to Earth sometime in 2033.
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Editor's note: Gallery shows Perseverance collectiing samples.

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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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