WASHINGTON — NASA has selected seven companies to conduct “out of the box” concept studies for the agency’s Mars Sample Return (MSR) program, which can deliver samples faster and cheaper than current plans.
NASA announced in late June that it had selected proposals from Aerojet Rocketdyne, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Quantum Space, SpaceX and Whittinghill Aerospace for a 90-day study of alternative MSR concepts. Each prize is worth up to $1.5 million.
The agency issued a request for proposals for the studies in mid-April after concluding that the current approach to returning samples would cost up to $11 billion and not be completed until 2040. The assessment was in response to an independent assessment completed last year. September, which found that the MSR program was unlikely to meet existing cost and schedule goals.
“Mars Sample Return will be one of the most complex missions NASA has undertaken, and it’s important that we do it faster, with less risk and at a lower cost,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement about the new project. studies.
NASA has not released details of the studies beyond the names of the industrial designs. At least three of the proposals, from Aerojet, Northrop and Whittinghill, appear to be aimed at the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), a rocket that will launch a prototype pod from the surface of Mars into orbit around the planet. The request for proposals for mission studies highlighted the MAV as one element of particular interest to NASA for studies.
“The vehicle for going to Mars is one of the key limiting factors in terms of management complexity and cost,” said Sandra Connelly, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for science, at a meeting of the Council on Space Studies of the National Academies that included a discussion of the MSR.
SpaceX, not surprisingly, is offering its Starship vehicle for the MSR. Blue Origin is apparently looking at using parts of the Artemis lunar exploration campaign; the request for proposals allowed companies to use elements of Artemis, such as the Space Launch System and the lunar gateway, as government equipment for the MSR.
In addition to the seven industry studies, NASA supports similar MSR studies conducted by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Applied Physics Laboratory, and a group of NASA centers. Those studies will be similar in scope and timeline to industry studies, Connelly said.
She told a Space Studies Council meeting that NASA is sticking to the study schedule set out in April. Work on the studies will formally begin in mid-July, with an interim report due within 45 days and a final report within 90 days. NASA will then review these studies to determine what changes, if any, to make to the MSR architecture. “We hope to have an agency path forward in early 2025.”
In the request for proposals, NASA included both total MSR cost reduction targets as well as maximum annual expenditures, but did not offer any specific metrics. The agency also did not set a target for expediting the delivery of samples. That was a deliberate choice, Connelly said, to ensure that the companies came up with proposals that were realistic, rather than concepts designed to achieve a specific cost or schedule.
Connelly and other NASA officials acknowledged at the meeting that there is no guarantee that any of the studies aimed at obtaining what the agency calls “out of the box” approaches to the MSR will successfully reduce costs or accelerate schedules.
“This is an opportunity to hear what the industry wants to tell us” about reducing the cost and schedule of MSR, Jeff Gramling, director of the MSR program at NASA Headquarters, said at a meeting of the Space Studies Council. “This is an agency that wants to see it through and make sure we haven’t missed anything before we establish a baseline for this mission.