Category Archives: Mars

The conquest of other worlds is one of the most cherished dreams of mankind. The new invention will help bring us closer to our cosmic goal faster. Now NASA is cooperating with a company that is developing power engines capable of delivering people to Mars in a relatively short time two months instead of nine.

A potentially revolutionary propulsion system is being developed by Howe Industries, an Arizona-based company. To achieve high speeds in a shorter period of time, an pulsed plasma rocket will use nuclear fission the release of energy from atoms splitting apart to create plasma packets for thrust.

In fact, the engine creates a controlled plasma jet that will help accelerate the rocket in space to significantly faster speeds than those currently produced by traditional chemical engines. Using a plasma propulsion system, the spacecraft can potentially generate up to 10 tons of thrust with a specific impulse of 5,000 seconds, which ensures extremely high fuel efficiency.

It sounds pretty revolutionary. However, this is not an entirely new concept. NASA has already developed a similar concept, known as PuFF, in 2018. But the pulsed plasma rocket, according to NASA, has a simpler design and is quite affordable.

The Space Agency claims that the high efficiency of the power plant can make it possible to carry out a manned mission to Mars within two months. Today, with the help of conventional propulsion systems, the journey to Mars takes nine months. The less time people can spend on space travel, the better: shorter periods of exposure to cosmic radiation and microgravity can help mitigate their effects on the human body. The pulsed plasma rocket will also be capable of carrying much heavier spacecraft, which can then be equipped with protection from galactic cosmic radiation for the crew on board.

The new propulsion system has the potential to revolutionize manned spaceflight, helping people get to Mars much faster.

Earlier we talked about how an astrophysicist criticized Elon Musks idea to colonize Mars.

According to gizmodo.com

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A journey to Mars in just two months: a revolutionary rocket engine is invented - The Universe. Space. Tech

If you're looking for some chess Entertainment, we have The Real Thing. Chess.com is excited to announce our newest bot, Phoenix lead singer Thomas Mars! You can challenge the new bot by going to our Play Computer page. But bewareThomas' bot is On Fire, so you better be ready to face his Funky Squaredance!

Play Against Thomas Mars

The singer recently sat down with IM Levy Rozman at the Marshall Chess Club in New York to play and talk about chess, music, and Phoenix:

A prominent figure in the French indie pop scene, Thomas is also an avid chess player. "My family would play a lot of chess. We were not that good, but it was a social thing," Thomas said. "I would play with my older brother, my dad, my sister... My mom was very competitive."

However, Thomas' passion was truly ignited during the 2020 pandemic. The singer found in ches a new and safe activity to spend time with his loved ones. "I played every day with my dad, just to stay in touch... I started to play everywhere, like when I was commuting, on airplanes, and stuff."

I played every day with my dad, just to stay in touch... I started to play everywhere. Thomas Mars

Phoenix is going on tour in Europe this May to celebrate the 15th anniversary of one of their most successful albums, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. This is the perfect opportunity for you to crank the album's two most popular songs, Lisztomania and 1901, while trying to checkmate the new bot!

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New Thomas Mars Chess Bot On Chess.com - Chess.com

Astrobiology is the field of science that studies the origins, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the Universe. In practice, this means sending robotic missions beyond Earth to analyze the atmospheres, surfaces, and chemistry of extraterrestrial worlds. At present, all of our astrobiology missions are focused on Mars, as it is considered the most Earth-like environment beyond our planet. While several missions will be destined for the outer Solar System to investigate Ocean Worlds for evidence of life (Europa, Ganymede, Titan, and Enceladus), our efforts to find life beyond Earth will remain predominantly on Mars.

If and when these efforts succeed, it will have drastic implications for future missions to Mars. Not only will great care need to be taken to protect Martian life from contamination by Earth organisms, but precautions must be taken to prevent the same from happening to Earth (aka. Planetary Protection). In a recent study, a team from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia, recommends that legal or normative frameworks be adopted now to ensure that future missions do not threaten sites where evidence of life (past or present) might be found.

The study was led by Clare Fletcher, a Ph.D. student with the Australian Centre for Astrobiology (ACA) and Earth and Sustainability Science Research Centre at UNSW. She was joined by Professor Martin Van Kranendonk, a researcher with the ACA and the head of the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Curtin University, and Professor Carol Oliver of the School of Biological, Earth & Environmental Sciences at UNSW. Their research paper, Exogeoconservation of Mars, appeared on April 21st in Space Policy.

The search for life on Mars can be traced to the late 19th and early 20th centuries when Percival Lowell made extensive observations from his observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Inspired by Schiaparellis illustrations of the Martian surface (which featured linear features he called canali), Lowell recorded what he also believed were canals and spent many years searching for other indications of infrastructure and an advanced civilization.During the ensuing decades, observatories worldwide observed Mars closely, looking for indications of life and similarities with Earth.

However, it was not until the Space Age that the first robotic probes flew past Mars, gathering data directly from its atmosphere and taking close-up images of the surface. These revealed a planet with a thin atmosphere composed predominantly of carbon dioxide and a frigid surface that did not appear hospitable to life. However, it was the Viking 1 and 2 missions, which landed on Mars in 1976, that forever dispelled the myth of a Martian civilization. But as Fletcher told Universe Today via email, the possibility of extant life has not been completely abandoned:

Its my personal belief that it is unlikely we will find evidence of extant (current) life on Mars, as opposed to evidence of past life on Mars. If we were to find extant life on Mars that could be proven to be endemic to Mars and not contamination from Earth, some think it might be found underground in lava tubes, for example, and some think the ice caps or any possible source of liquid water might be suitable places.

Ironically, it was the same missions that discredited the notion of there being life on Mars that revealed evidence that water once flowed on its surface. Thanks to the many orbiter, lander, and rover missions sent to Mars since the turn of the century, scientists theorize that this period coincided with the Noachian Era (ca. 4.1 3.7 billion years ago). According to the most recent fossilized evidence, it was also during this period that life first appeared on Earth (in the form of single-celled bacteria).

Our current astrobiology efforts on behalf of NASA and other space agencies are focused on Mars precisely for this reason: to determine if life emerged on Mars billions of years ago and whether or not it co-evolved with life on Earth. This includes the proposed Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission that will retrieve the drill samples obtained by the Perseverance rover in the Jezero Crater and return them to Earth for analysis. In addition, NASA and China plan to send crewed missions to Mars by 2040 and 2033 (respectively), including astrobiology studies.

These activities could threaten the very abodes where evidence of past life could be found or (worse) still exists. Human activities might threaten sites like this in part due to possible microbial contamination, said Fletcher. Evidence of life (past and extant) also has greater scientific value when in its palaeoenvironmental context, so any human activities that might damage the evidence of life and/or its surrounding environmental context pose a risk. This could be something innocuous, like debris falling in the wrong spot, or something more serious, like driving over possibly significant outcrops with a rover.

Conservation measures must be developed and implemented before additional missions are sent to Mars. Given humanitys impact on Earths natural environment and our attempts to mitigate this through conservation efforts. In particular, there have been numerous cases where scientific studies were conducted without regard for the heritage value of the site and where damage was done because of a lack of proper measures. These lessons, says Fletcher, could inform future scientific efforts on Mars:

Its important that we learn from what has been considered damaging on Earth and take this into consideration when exploring Mars. If a site is damaged beyond being able to be studied in the future, then we limit what can actually be learned from a site. When considering Mars missions cost billions of dollars and are to meet specific scientific goals, limiting the information being learned from a site is incredibly detrimental. My recommendations are that of my paper: interdisciplinary cooperation, drawing on experience and knowledge from Earth, creating norms and a code of practice (part of my PhD work), and working towards creating legislation for these issues.

The need for exogeoconservation is paramount at this juncture. In addition to Mars, multiple astrobiology missions will travel to the outer Solar System this decade to search for evidence of life on icy moons like Europa, Ganymede, Titan, and Enceladus. This includes the ESAs JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) mission, currently en route to Ganymede, and NASAs Europa Clipper and Dragonfly missions that will launch for Europa and Titan in October 2024 and 2028 (respectively). Therefore, the ability to search for extant or past life without damaging its natural environment is an ethical and scientific necessity.

I hope this paper is very much a starting point for anyone working in Mars science and exploration, as well as anyone thinking about space policy and exogeoconservation, said Fletcher. My goal was to start drawing attention to these issues, and that way start a generation of researchers and practitioners focused on exogeoconservation of Mars.

Further Reading: Space Policy

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We Need to Consider Conservation Efforts on Mars - Universe Today

The international space community has its sights set on humans landing on Mars by the mid-2030s, but a big question remains once astronauts get there: what will they eat? Researchers in the Netherlands at Wageningen University & Research are working to solve that particular problem in the long-term, when humans theoretically colonize the planet and won't exactly be able to rely on Uber Eats. In a new study that mimicked Martian conditions in a controlled greenhouse, attempts to grow food were boosted by using a technique pioneered by Mayans called intercropping. Per Reuters, this agricultural method involves growing a combination of mutually beneficial crops together.

When the researchers tested intercropping different groups of tomatoes, peas, and carrotsgrown in the same pots or alonewith soil that chemically and physically matched what's found on Mars, tomato yields were boosted when grouped with peas. The peas and carrots preferred to grow alone, but seeing tomatoes thrive with thicker stems, more and bigger fruit per plant, and faster maturation was an exciting find. "The fact that it worked really well for one out of the three species was a big find, one that we can now build further research on," astrobiologist and lead author Rebeca Gonalves told Reuters. "Now it's just a matter of adjusting the experimental conditions until we find the most optimal system. It can be different species, more species, different ratio of species."

Per Phys.org, planting peas close to tomato plants has been known to benefit tomatoes because of the way green peas influence the soilnitrogen pulled in from the air by pea plants turns into ammonia, which is released into the dirt, fertilizing it in a way tomato plants like. To create a Mars-like atmosphere, the researchers not only replicated soil conditions, but controlled the greenhouse to replicate what one might look like 140 million miles away, including the gases, temperature, and humidity it would have. While they couldn't taste their crops until they underwent testing, they have tried out past samples. "I thought the Martian ones were sweeter than the Earth ones," says coauthor Wieger Wamelink. (Ideas for getting Martian rocks back to Earth on the cheap? NASA is all ears.)

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Mayan Intercropping Could Be Key to Food on Mars - Newser

Water-filled oceans, meandering river deltas, varying seasons, and an insulating atmosphere are usually descriptors for Earththe only known rock to support life in the solar system. But during the Noarchian, a period in Mars history some 4.1 to 3.5 billion years ago, these descriptions perfectly matched the fourth rock from the Sun. Back then, the not-so-red planet couldve even supported life. In fact, Mars boasts the oldest known prebiotic, life-supporting conditions.

Of course, the Mars of today isnt so hospitableits atmosphere is nearly non-existent, riverbeds are dried up, and any water is now locked under Mars iron oxide-rich soil or CO2-filled ice caps. In other words, it isnt a great place for humans, so luckily weve sent robots in our place to glimpse into our planetary neighbors geologic past.

This week a new study, published in the

The Gale lake environment, as revealed by these ancient rocks, gives us a window into a habitable environment that looks surprisingly similar to places on Earth today, ChemCams principal investigator Nina Lanza, said in a press statement. Manganese minerals are common in the shallow, oxic waters found on lake shores on Earth, and its remarkable to find such recognizable features on ancient Mars.

The piece of tech thats central to the ChemCam is a high-powered laser that can deliver a dizzying 1 million watts of power into the area the side of a pin-head. While only providing this burst of energy for five-billionths of a second, its enough to excite electrons in the soil sample and the spectrometer reads the light, detailing the atomic makeup of the sample.

The puzzling thing about manganese is that, at least on Earth the enrichment process is sped up by microbes and oxygennot exactly modern Mars has in spades.

On Mars, we dont have evidence for life, and the mechanism to produce oxygen in Marss ancient atmosphere is unclear, so how the manganese oxide was formed and concentrated here is really puzzling, Los Alamos National Laboratorys Patrick Gasda, lead author on the study, said in a press statement. These findings point to larger processes occurring in the Martian atmosphere or surface water and shows that more work needs to be done to understand oxidation on Mars.

Its possible that manganese became enriched in these deposits as water percolate through soil adjacent to some ancient river or lake. Because oxidation states of manganese can be used by terrestrial microbes for energy, its possible that Martian microbial life similarly fed on these deposits.

Today, Earth stands alone in the Solar System for its remarkable ability to support life, but look back four billion years in the past, and Mars wouldve been the clear favorite for finding life.

Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough.

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A Laser Zapped the Rocks on Mars and Revealed a Long-Lost Water World - Popular Mechanics

The future of space travel depends on our ability to reach celestial pit stops faster and more efficiently. As such, NASA is working with a technology development company on a new propulsion system that could drop off humans on Mars in a relatively speedy two months time rather than the current nine month journey required to reach the Red Planet.

Krispy Kreme's Q1 beat driven by heart donuts

NASAs Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program recently selected six promising projects for additional funding and development, allowing them to graduate to the second stage of development. The new science fiction-like concepts, as described by John Nelson, NIAC program executive at NASA, include a lunar railway system and fluid-based telescopes, as well as a pulsed plasma rocket.

The potentially groundbreaking propulsion system is being developed by Arizona-based Howe Industries. To reach high velocities within a shorter period of time, the pulsed plasma rocket would use nuclear fissionthe release of energy from atoms splitting apartto generate packets of plasma for thrust.

It would essentially produce a controlled jet of plasma to help propel the rocket through space. Using the new propulsion system, and in terms of thrust, the rocket could potentially generate up to 22,481 pounds of force (100,000 Newtons) with a specific impulse (Isp) of 5,000 seconds, for remarkably high fuel efficiency.

Its not an entirely new concept. NASA began developing its own version back in 2018 under the name Pulsed Fission-Fusion (PuFF). PuFF relied on a device commonly used to compress laboratory plasmas to high pressures for very short timescales, called z-Pinch, to produce thrust. The pulsed plasma rocket, however, is smaller, simpler, and more affordable, according to NASA.

The space agency claims that the propulsion systems high efficiency could allow for crewed missions to Mars to be completed within two months. As it stands today with commonly used propulsion systems, a trip to Mars takes around nine months. The less time humans can spend traveling through space, the better. Shorter periods of exposure to space radiation and microgravity could help mitigate its effects on the human body.

The pulsed plasma rocket would also be capable of carrying much heavier spacecraft, which can be then equipped with shielding against galactic cosmic rays for the crew on board.

Phase 2 of NIAC is focused on assessing the neutronics of the system (how the motion of the spacecraft interacts with the plasma), designing the spacecraft, power system, and necessary subsystems, analyzing the magnetic nozzle capabilities, and determining trajectories and benefits of the pulsed plasma rocket, according to NASA.

The new propulsion system has the potential to revolutionize crewed spaceflight, helping humans make it to Mars without the toil of the trip itself.

A version of this article originally appeared on Gizmoodo.

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NASA wants to build a new rocket that could get to Mars in just 2 months - Quartz

Solar flares are a common occurrence on the sun, which occur when the sun releases giant explosions of energy and light, according to NASA.

Solar flares have a cycle, reaching their peak every 11 years, and NASA explains that they are recorded on a classification system that divides solar flares according to their strength. The smallest ones are A-class (near background levels), followed by B, C, M and X.

This year marks the peak of solar flares, known as solar maximum, NPR reports, sharing how one such storm caused telegraph stations to catch on fire in 1859. NASA explains that powerful solar flares have broken modern sensors because of how strong they can be; but if such a flare hits Earth it can damage satellites, power grids and communication systems.

Today, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warns that strong solar flares will be hitting Earth the next several days, so some of our electrical communication could go down, NPR reports.

According to NASA, the Earths magnetic atmosphere protects us from solar flare damage. But what does that mean for future astronauts on Mars, where no such atmosphere exists?

Two of NASAs robots, the Curiosity Rover and the MAVEN Orbiter, will have the rare experience of going through a solar maximum, per NASA, and they will use this as a chance to study the solar flares affects on Mars.

Shannon Curry, a principal investigator for the MAVEN orbiter, shared that for humans and assets on the Martian surface, we dont have a solid handle on what the effect is from radiation during solar activity. Id actually love to see the big one at Mars this year a large event that we can study to understand solar radiation better before astronauts go to Mars, per the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL, at the California Institute of Technology.

During solar flares, the MAVEN orbiter and Curiosity rover would help scientists understand how many solar particles make it to Mars surface and the amount of energy they pertain, per JPL.

One specific instrument on the Curiosity rover has helped scientists learn how much radiation impacts Mars and it has let them know how much shielding from radiation astronauts could expect by using caves, lava tubes, or cliff faces for protection.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, solar flares are known to have ionized radiation, such as X-rays and gamma rays, which are known to damage satellites and interrupt radio communications.

If radiation levels get too high on Mars for humans, scientists are hoping that MAVEN and Curiosity can work together to create an early warning system that can warn other missions and decrease any radiation damage, per JPL.

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This is how NASA is preparing to protect its astronauts on Mars from solar flares - Deseret News

CHICAGO Mars, Inc. revealed it is investing $47 million in a sustainable dairy plan as part of its broader climate strategy, which totals $1 billion over a span of three years.

Mars shared it is working to reduce the carbon footprint of its dairy line with its climate-first approach to dairy sourcing, which it is calling Mooving Dairy Forward. The commitment, highlighted by partnerships with FrieslandCampina and other companies, aligns with the companys goal to cut emissions by 50% by 2030, as measured against a 2015 baseline.

The company said it will work with industry leaders to implement a host of meaningful on-farm interventions focused on critical areas such as enteric methane reduction, efficient manure management and sustainable feed production.

Per Mars, more than 200,000 dairy cows and 1,000 farms supply the manufacturers billion-dollar confectionery business, which includes M&M's and Snickers. The company identified dairy as the second largest contributor to the carbon footprint of its snacking business and said raw ingredients account for more than 70% of its total GHG emissions.

The dairy sustainability plan involves Mars collaborating with dairy cooperative FrieslandCampina. Mars said through the partnership a group of farms will be dedicated to Mars dairy supply. With an emphasis on more sustainable dairy, Mars said the program will involve innovative practices and technologies that can be refined and scaled up in a focused and accelerated environment. The goal is to identify practices that can be adopted throughout the cooperative.

Amanda Davies, chief R&D, procurement and sustainability officer for Mars Snacking, said the company views doing its part to keep the planet healthy as an absolute non-negotiable. Davies added that Mars vision for sustainable dairy will only become a reality with the support of farmers and suppliers.

Which is why, as part of our Moo'ving Dairy Forward sustainable dairy plan, we're putting millions of dollars directly back into the pockets of farmers through our contracts to help them make climate smart changes to the way they farm, Davies said. Together, I know that we can forge a path that helps address climate change head on and contributes to reshaping our wider industry for a more sustainable future."

Mars shared that its investment also includes launching three pilot net zero dairy farms with the DMK Group in Germany. The company said those pilots, which are part of a five-year project, will key in on implementing new science and technology, and the goal is to achieve scalable and economically viable practices that lead to net zero dairy.

In another partnership, Mars is teaming up with Fonterra and Sea Forest on a seaweed food supplement trial that aims to show how their Seafeed supplement helps reduce how much methane dairy cows generate while digesting their food.

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Mars invests $47 million in sustainable dairy initiative - Food Business News

During a recent appearance on "The Rocker Morning Show", which airs on Kalamazoo's rock station 107.7 WRKR, MTLEY CRE guitarist Mick Mars was asked about the variety of sounds and musical styles covered on his debut solo album, "The Other Side Of Mars". He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I think that me being on my own really doesn't give me any boundaries or any restrictions or stuff. I can take it to wherever I would like to have it. My album is pretty diverse. It shows different sides of how I write or how I approach music just a lot of different things."

Regarding how long it took him to put together the material for "The Other Side Of Mars", Mick said: "Some of [the ideas] I had for a while, but it took me a good four years to get out what I really wanted to. 'Cause I listen back to some of my older stuff and I go, 'Ugh', and I get rid of it. 'Cause it sounds dated. I didn't wanna sound like, 'Here's an old rocker that's playing 1980s music still.' And not that that's a bad thing, but I couldn't stay there. I needed to get something different or something people wouldn't really expect from me."

Mars went on to say that he is able to have more freedom with his solo project than he would have been able to with MTLEY CRE. "I can play anything," he said. "I played everything, from country music to a lot of different things, a lot of different influences, a lot of people that I listen to, everything from classical, Mozart, Beethoven, and all those people, and country music, and all sorts of stuff. I fell in love with the blues."

"The Other Side Of Mars" was released on February 23. The effort was made available via Mars's own label 1313, LLC, in partnership with MRI.

Birmingham, Alabama rocker Jacob Bunton collaborated extensively with Mars on "The Other Side Of Mars".

Bunton had previously worked with former GUNS N' ROSES drummer Steven Adler and CINDERELLA frontman Tom Keifer, and has songwriting credits with Mariah Carey, Steven Tyler and Smokey Robinson, among others.

Bunton sings lead on all but two of the 12 songs on "The Other Side Of Mars".

Other guests on the LP include WINGER/ALICE COOPER keyboardist Paul Taylor, KORN drummer Ray Luzier, and Brion Gamboa, who handled lead vocals on the songs "Undone" and "Killing Breed".

Bunton previously fronted the Alabama bands MARS ELECTRIC and LYNAM.

This past February, Mick told Joe Rock of the WBAB radio station that he wanted to take the music on his second solo album in a slightly different direction from what he did on "The Other Side Of Mars". "Another level. It has to be that way," he explained. "I'm not a youngster. And I'm not a depressed dark guy or nothing like that. But when you start getting older, you start going, like, 'I don't wanna do that again. Let's try this or move up or go a different level,' instead of putting the same repetitious kind of thing, which is [what you sometimes do when you are stuck in an] album-tour,-album tour [cycle]. And a lot of times, when that does happen, you find yourself kind of repeating yourself, and it gets to be pretty much samey after a while. So I'm fortunate enough to be old I made it to here but to be able to change my music, my next step. I don't wanna stay on this level. I have to take it up a notch every time. And if I get to do a third

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Regarding which guest musicians he would like to possibly approach about appearing on his second solo album, Mick said: "I think of different things, I guess. I was, at one point, just kind of like fantasizing about it. I don't even know if it would work. But I was thinking, like, Slash [GUNS N' ROSES] is a bud, and calling Slash in and going, 'Hey, come on in there and goof around.' And Doug Pinnick [KING'S X], just to play bass not to sing, but for his bass playing. And I think that the fans would kind of dig that, but I don't know what would come out of it. But I'm willing to take the chance, of course.

"As far as other things go, let's take it back a bit and go, a lot of people were expecting more of a blues album [from me this time around]," he continued. "Maybe I could throw a blues song on there, but the 'cry in your beer' kind of blues, but the kind that you just wanna get up and fight. After having a couple beers, I'm gonna beat up this [guy]. But, yeah, I can do that kind of stuff. I'm so open, and I have so much freedom to take my project anywhere, of course, and any direction. It's all open. It's a great feeling, really a great feeling just to express myself any way I want. I could go out and get, let's say, an unknown female singer and just totally have something that's so different than what you would expect from me. I don't know if people do know what they expect, 'cause I don't what I'm doing next. I do know what I'm doing next, but I don't know."

When Mars announced his retirement from touring with MTLEY CRE in October 2022 as a result of worsening health issues, he maintained that he would remain a member of the band, with John 5 taking his place on the road. However, he has since filed a lawsuit against MTLEY CRE in Los Angeles County's Superior Court, claiming that, after his announcement, the rest of CRE tried to remove him as a significant stakeholder in the group's corporation and business holdings via a shareholders' meeting.

Mars whose real name is Robert Alan Deal served as MTLEY CRE's lead guitarist since the band's inception in 1981.

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MICK MARS Wanted To Do Something 'Different' With His Debut Solo Album: I Didn't Want It To Sound Like '1980s Music' - BLABBERMOUTH.NET

This illustration shows a concept for multiple robots that would team up to ferry to Earth samples collected from the Mars surface by NASAs Mars Perseverance rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASAs Mars Sample Return mission is grappling with escalating costs and a postponed timeline, prompting a search for more efficient methods from the private sector to ensure its execution.

A critical NASA mission in the search for life beyond Earth, Mars Sample Return, is in trouble. Its budget has ballooned from US$5 billion to over $11 billion, and the sample return date may slip from the end of this decade to 2040.

The mission would be the first to try to return rock samples from Mars to Earth so scientists can analyze them for signs of past life.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a press conference on April 15, 2024, that the mission as currently conceived is too expensive and too slow. NASA gave private companies a month to submit proposals for bringing the samples back in a quicker and more affordable way.

As an astronomer who studies cosmology and has written a book about early missions to Mars, Ive been watching the sample return saga play out. Mars is the nearest and best place to search for life beyond Earth, and if this ambitious NASA mission unraveled, scientists would lose their chance to learn much more about the red planet.

The first NASA missions to reach the surface of Mars in 1976 revealed the planet as a frigid desert, uninhabitable without a thick atmosphere to shield life from the Suns ultraviolet radiation. But studies conducted over the past decade suggest that the planet may have been much warmer and wetter several billion years ago.

The Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have each shown that the planets early environment was suitable for microbial life.

They found the chemical building blocks of life and signs of surface water in the distant past. Curiosity, which landed on Mars in 2012, is still active; its twin, Perseverance, which landed on Mars in 2021, will play a crucial role in the sample return mission.

The first time NASA looked for life in a Mars rock was in 1996. Scientists claimed they had discovered microscopic fossils of bacteria in the Martian meteorite ALH84001. This meteorite is a piece of Mars that landed in Antarctica 13,000 years ago and was recovered in 1984. Scientists disagreed over whether the meteorite really had ever harbored biology, and today most scientists agree that theres not enough evidence to say that the rock contains fossils.

Several hundred Martian meteorites have been found on Earth in the past 40 years. Theyre free samples that fell to Earth, so while it might seem intuitive to study them, scientists cant tell where on Mars these meteorites originated. Also, they were blasted off the planets surface by impacts, and those violent events could have easily destroyed or altered subtle evidence of life in the rock.

Theres no substitute for bringing back samples from a region known to have been hospitable to life in the past. As a result, the agency is facing a price tag of $700 million per ounce, making these samples the most expensive material ever gathered.

Bringing Mars rocks back to Earth is the most challenging mission NASA has ever attempted, and the first stage has already started.

Perseverance has collected over two dozen rock and soil samples, depositing them on the floor of the Jezero Crater, a region that was probably once flooded with water and could have harbored life. The rover inserts the samples in containers the size of test tubes. Once the rover fills all the sample tubes, it will gather them and bring them to the spot where NASAs Sample Retrieval Lander will land. The Sample Retrieval Lander includes a rocket to get the samples into orbit around Mars.

The European Space Agency has designed an Earth Return Orbiter, which will rendezvous with the rocket in orbit and capture the basketball-sized sample container. The samples will then be automatically sealed into a biocontainment system and transferred to an Earth entry capsule, which is part of the Earth Return Orbiter. After the long trip home, the entry capsule will parachute to the Earths surface.

The complex choreography of this mission, which involves a rover, a lander, a rocket, an orbiter and the coordination of two space agencies, is unprecedented. Its the culprit behind the ballooning budget and the lengthy timeline.

Mars Sample Return has blown a hole in NASAs budget, which threatens other missions that need funding.

The NASA center behind the mission, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, just laid off over 500 employees. Its likely that Mars Sample Returns budget partly caused the layoffs, but they also came down to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory having an overfull plate of planetary missions and suffering budget cuts.

Within the past year, an independent review board report and a report from the NASA Office of Inspector General raised deep concerns about the viability of the sample return mission. These reports described the missions design as overly complex and noted issues such as inflation, supply chain problems and unrealistic costs and schedule estimates.

NASA is also feeling the heat from Congress. For fiscal year 2024, the Senate Appropriations Committee cut NASAs planetary science budget by over half a billion dollars. If NASA cant keep a lid on the costs, the mission might even get canceled.

Faced with these challenges, NASA has put out a call for innovative designs from private industry, with a goal of shrinking the missions cost and complexity. Proposals are due by May 17, which is an extremely tight timeline for such a challenging design effort. And itll be hard for private companies to improve on the plan that experts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory had over a decade to put together.

An important potential player in this situation is the commercial space company SpaceX. NASA is already partnering with SpaceX on Americas return to the Moon. For the Artemis III mission, SpaceX will attempt to land humans on the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years.

However, the massive Starship rocket that SpaceX will use for Artemis has had only three test flights and needs a lot more development before NASA will trust it with a human cargo.

In principle, a Starship rocket could bring back a large payload of Mars rocks in a single two-year mission and at far lower cost. But Starship comes with great risks and uncertainties. Its not clear whether that rocket could return the samples that Perseverance has already gathered.

Starship uses a launchpad, and it would need to be refueled for a return journey. But theres no launchpad or fueling station at the Jezero Crater. Starship is designed to carry people, but if astronauts go to Mars to collect the samples, SpaceX will need a Starship rocket thats even bigger than the one it has tested so far.

Sending astronauts also carries extra risk and cost, and a strategy of using people might end up more complicated than NASAs current plan.

With all these pressures and constraints, NASA has chosen to see whether the private sector can come up with a winning solution. Well know the answer next month.

Written by Chris Impey, University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona.

Adapted from an article originally published in The Conversation.

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Will SpaceX's Innovation Save NASA's Mars Mission? - SciTechDaily