Turnaround – To reduce costs and return times for samples collected on the red planet, the American space agency is now considering two options, one of which relies on private companies
The Nasa announced Tuesday evening that it could call on private companies, primarily those of billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, SpaceX and Blue Origin, to help it bring rock samples from Mars back to Earth. Faced with an explosion in costs and delays, the American space agency had to rethink the mission to return these samples and is now considering two options, one of which relies partly on private actors.
Since round-trip missions to Mars are long and complex, NASA initially expected a return of samples around 2030, but this deadline was deemed “unrealistic” last year by an internal audit, which estimated that they might not actually return until 2040.
A return estimated between 2035 and 2039
“It was simply unacceptable,” admitted Bill Nelson, the head of NASA, at a press conference on Tuesday. Especially since China, a rival power, plans to launch a similar mission around 2028, according to state media, and could thus become the first country to achieve such a feat.
With these two new avenues envisaged by the American space agency, the return is estimated(…) Read more on 20minutes
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