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By NASA
Following the historic year of 1969 that saw two successful Moon landings, 1970 opened on a more sober note. Ever-tightening federal budgets forced NASA to rescope its future lunar landing plans. The need for a Saturn V to launch an experimental space station in 1972 forced the cancellation of the final Moon landing mission and an overall stretching out of the Moon landing flights. Apollo 13 slipped to April, but the crew of James Lovell, Thomas “Ken” Mattingly, and Fred W. Haise and their backups John Young, John “Jack” Swigert, and Charles Duke continued intensive training for the landing at Fra Mauro. Training included practicing their surface excursions and water egress, along with time in spacecraft simulators. The three stages of the Apollo 14 Saturn V arrived at the launch site and workers began the stacking process for that mission now planned for October 1970. Scientists met in Houston to review the preliminary findings from their studies of the lunar samples returned by Apollo 11.
Apollo Program Changes
Apollo Moon landing plans in early 1970, with blue indicating completed landings, green planned landings at the time, and red canceled landings. Illustration of the Apollo Applications Program, later renamed Skylab, experimental space station then planned for 1972. On Jan. 4, 1970, NASA Deputy Administrator George Low announced the cancellation of Apollo 20, the final planned Apollo Moon landing mission. The agency needed the Saturn V rocket that would have launched Apollo 20 to launch the Apollo Applications Program (AAP) experimental space station, renamed Skylab in February 1970. Since previous NASA Administrator James Webb had precluded the building of any additional Saturn V rockets in 1968, this proved the only viable yet difficult solution.
In other program changes, on Jan. 13 NASA Administrator Thomas Paine addressed how NASA planned to deal with ongoing budgetary challenges. Lunar landing missions would now occur every six months instead of every four, and with the slip of Apollo 13 to April, Apollo 14 would now fly in October instead of July. Apollo 15 and 16 would fly in 1971, then AAP would launch in 1972, and three successive crews would spend, 28, 56, and 56 days aboard the station. Lunar landing missions would resume in 1973, with Apollo 17, 18, and 19 closing out the program by the following year.
Top NASA managers in the Mission Control Center, including Sigurd “Sig” Sjoberg, third from left, Christopher Kraft, sitting in white shirt, and Dale Myers, third from right. Wernher von Braun in his office at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. In addition to programmatic changes, several key management changes took place at NASA in January 1970. On Nov. 26, 1969, Christopher Kraft , the director of flight operations at the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC), now NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, assumed the position of MSC deputy director. On Dec. 28, MSC Director Robert Gilruth named Sigurd “Sig” Sjoberg, deputy director of flight operations since 1963, to succeed Kraft. At NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight George Mueller resigned his position effective Dec. 10, 1969. To replace Mueller, on Jan. 8, NASA Administrator Paine named Dale Myers, vice president and general manager of the space shuttle program at North American Rockwell Corporation. On Jan. 27, Paine announced that Wernher von Braun, designer of the Saturn family of rockets and director of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, since its establishment in 1960, would move to NASA Headquarters and assume the position of deputy associate administrator for planning.
Apollo 11 Lunar Science Symposium
Sign welcoming scientists to the Apollo 11 Lunar Science Conference. Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin addresses a reception at the First Lunar Science Conference. Between Jan. 5 and 8, 1970, several hundred scientists, including all 142 U.S. and international principal investigators provided with Apollo 11 samples, gathered in downtown Houston’s Albert Thomas Exhibit and Convention Center for the Apollo 11 Lunar Science Conference. During the conference, the scientists discussed the chemistry, mineralogy, and petrology of the lunar samples, the search for carbon compounds and any evidence of organic material, the results of dating of the samples, and the results returned by the Early Apollo Surface Experiments Package (EASEP). Senior NASA managers including Administrator Paine, Deputy Administrator Low, and Apollo Program Director Rocco Petrone attended the conference, and Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin gave a keynote speech at a dinner reception. The prestigious journal Science dedicated its Jan. 30, 1970, edition to the papers presented at the conference, dubbing it “The Moon Issue”. The Lunar Science Conference evolved into an annual event, renamed the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in 1978, and continues to attract scientists from around the world to discuss the latest developments in lunar and planetary exploration.
Apollo 12
Apollo 12 astronaut Richard Gordon riding in one of the Grand Marshal cars in the Rose Parade in Pasadena, California. Actress June Lockhart, left, interviews Apollo 12 astronauts Charles “Pete” Conrad, Gordon, and Alan Bean during the Rose Parade.courtesy emmyonline.com Apollo 12 astronauts and their wives visiting former President and Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson at the LBJ Ranch in Texas. On New Year’s Day 1970, Apollo 12 astronauts Charles “Pete” Conrad, Richard Gordon, and Alan Bean led the 81st annual Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California, as Grand Marshals. Actress June Lockhart, an avid space enthusiast, interviewed them during the TV broadcast of the event. As President Richard Nixon had earlier requested, Conrad, Gordon, and Bean and their wives paid a visit to former President Lyndon B. Johnson and First Lady Lady Bird Johnson at their ranch near Fredericksburg, Texas, on Jan. 14, 1970. The astronauts described their mission to the former President and Mrs. Johnson.
The Apollo 12 Command Module Yankee Clipper arrives at the North American Rockwell (NAR) facility in Downey, California. Yankee Clipper at NAR in Downey. A technician examines the Surveyor 3 camera returned by the Apollo 12 astronauts. Managers released the Apollo 12 Command Module (CM) Yankee Clipper from quarantine and shipped it back to its manufacturer, the North American Rockwell plant in Downey, California, on Jan. 12. Engineers there completed a thorough inspection of the spacecraft and eventually prepared it for public display. NASA transferred Yankee Clipper to the Smithsonian Institution in 1973, and today the capsule resides at the Virginia Air & Space Center in Hampton, Virginia. NASA also released from quarantine the lunar samples and the parts of the Surveyor 3 spacecraft returned by the Apollo 12 astronauts. The scientists received their allocated samples in mid-February, while after initial examination in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL) the Surveyor parts arrived at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for detailed analysis.
Apollo 13
As the first step in the programmatic rescheduling of all Moon landings, on Jan. 7, NASA announced the delay of the Apollo 13 launch from March 12 to April 11. The Saturn V rocket topped with the Apollo spacecraft had rolled out the previous December to Launch Pad 39A where workers began tests on the vehicle. The prime crew of Lovell, Mattingly, and Haise, and their backups Young, Swigert, and Duke, continued to train for the 10-day mission to land in the Fra Mauro region of the Moon.
During water recovery exercises, Apollo 13 astronauts (in white flight suits) Thomas “Ken” Mattingly, left, Fred Haise, and James Lovell in the life raft after emerging from the boilerplate Apollo capsule. Apollo 13 astronaut Lovell suits up for a spacewalk training session. Apollo 13 astronaut Haise during a spacewalk simulation. Apollo 13 prime crew members Lovell, Mattingly, and Haise completed their water egress training in the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Galveston, Texas, on Jan. 24. With support from the Motorized Vessel Retriever, the three astronauts entered a boilerplate Apollo CM. Sailors lowered the capsule into the water, first in the Stable 2 or apex down position. Three self-inflating balloons righted the spacecraft into the Stable 1 apex up position within a few minutes. With assistance from the recovery team, Lovell, Mattingly, and Haise exited the spacecraft onto a life raft. A helicopter lifted them out of the life rafts using Billy Pugh nets and returned them to Retriever. Later that day, the astronauts returned to the MSC to examine Moon rocks in the LRL that the Apollo 12 astronauts had returned the previous November.
During their 33.5 hours on the Moon’s surface, Lovell and Haise planned to conduct two four-hour spacewalks to set up the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package (ALSEP), a suite of five investigations designed to collect data about the lunar environment after the astronauts’ departure, and to conduct geologic explorations of the landing site. Mattingly planned to remain in the Command and Service Module (CSM), conducting geologic observations from lunar orbit including photographing potential future landing sites. Lovell and Haise conducted several simulations of the spacewalk timelines, including setting up the ALSEP equipment, practicing taking core samples, and photographing their activities for documentation purposes. They and their backups conducted practice sessions with the partial gravity simulator, also known as POGO, an arrangement of harnesses and servos that simulated walking in the lunar one-sixth gravity. Lovell and Young completed several flights in the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV) that simulated the flying characteristics of the Lunar Module (LM) for the final several hundred feet of the descent to the surface.
A closed Apollo 13 rock box. An open rock box, partially outfitted with core sample tubes and sample container dispenser. A technician holds the American flag that flew aboard Apollo 13. In the LRL, technicians prepared the Apollo Lunar Sample Return Containers (ALSRC), or rock boxes, for Apollo 13. Like all missions, Apollo 13 carried two ALSRCs, with each box and lid manufactured from a single block of aluminum. Workers placed sample containers and bags and two 2-cm core sample tubes inside the two ALSRCs. Once loaded, technicians sealed the boxes under vacuum conditions so that they would not contain pressure greater than lunar ambient conditions. Engineers at MSC prepared the American flag that Lovell and Haise planned to plant on the Moon for stowage on the LM’s forward landing strut.
Apollo 14
Workers lower the Apollo 14 Lunar Module (LM) ascent stage onto the Command Module (CM) in a preflight docking test. Workers prepare the Apollo 14 LM descent stage for mating with the ascent stage. Workers prepare the Apollo 14 LM ascent stage for mating with the descent stage. As part of the rescheduling of Moon missions, NASA delayed the launch of the next flight, Apollo 14, from July to October 1970. The CSM and the LM had arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida late in 1969 and technicians conducted tests on the vehicles in the Manned Spacecraft Operations Building (MSOB). On Jan. 12, workers lowered the ascent stage of the LM onto the CSM to perform a docking test – the next time the two vehicles docked they would be on the way to the Moon and the test verified their compatibility. Workers mated the two stages of the LM on Jan. 20.
The first stage of Apollo 14’s Saturn V inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The second stage of Apollo 14’s Saturn V arrives at the VAB. The third stage of Apollo 14’s Saturn V arrives at KSC. The three stages of the Apollo 14 Saturn V arrived in KSC’s cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) in mid-January and while workers stacked the first stage on its Mobile Launch Platform on Jan. 14, they delayed stacking the remainder of the rocket stages until May 1970. That decision proved fortunate, since engineers needed to modify the second stage engines following the pogo oscillations experienced during the Apollo 13 launch.
Apollo 14 backup Commander Eugene Cernan prepares for a vacuum chamber test in the Space Environment Simulation Lab (SESL). Apollo 14 backup crew member Joe Engle during a vacuum chamber test in the SESL. Apollo 14 astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell and their backups Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Joe Engle continued training for their mission. In addition to working in spacecraft simulators, Shepard, Mitchell, Cernan, and Engle conducted suited vacuum chamber runs in MSC’s Space Environmental Simulation Laboratory (SESL) and completed their first familiarization with deploying their suite of ALSEP investigations.
NASA engineer William Creasy, kneeling in sport coat, and the technical team that built the Modular Equipment Transporter (MET), demonstrate the prototype to Roundup editor Sally LaMere. Apollo 14 support astronaut William Pogue tests the MET during parabolic flight. The Apollo 14 astronauts made the first use of the Modular Equipment Transporter (MET), a golf-cart like wheeled conveyance to transport their tools and lunar samples. A team led by project design engineer William Creasy developed the MET based on recommendations from the first two Moon landing crews on how to improve efficiency on the lunar surface. Creasy and his team demonstrated the MET to Sally LaMere, editor of The Roundup, MSC’s employee newsletter. Three support astronauts, William Pogue, Anthony “Tony” England, and Gordon Fullerton tested the MET prototype in simulated one-sixth lunar gravity during parabolic aircraft flights.
To be continued …
News from around the world in January 1970:
January 1 – President Richard Nixon signs the National Environmental Protection Act into law.
January 4 – The Beatles hold their final recording session at Abbey Road Studios in London.
January 5 – Daytime soap opera All My Children premieres.
January 11 – The Kansas City Chiefs beat the Minnesota Vikings 23-7 in Super Bowl IV, played in Tulane Stadium in New Orleans.
January 22 – Pan American Airlines flies the first scheduled commercial Boeing-747 flight from New York to London.
January 14 – Diana Ross and the Supremes perform their final concert in Las Vegas.
January 25 – The film M*A*S*H, directed by Robert Altman, premieres.
January 26 – Simon & Garfunkel release Bridge Over Troubled Water, their fifth and final album.
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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Artist concept highlighting the novel approach proposed by the 2025 NIAC awarded selection of the Thermo-Photo-Catalysis of Water for Crewed Mars Transit Spacecraft Oxygen Supply concept.NASA/Saurabh Vilekar Saurabh Vilekar
Precision Combustion
Precision Combustion, Inc. (PCI) proposes to develop a uniquely compact, lightweight, low-power, and durable Microlith® Thermo-Photo-Catalytic (TPC) Reactor for crewed Mars transit spacecraft O2 supply. As crewed space exploration mission destinations move from low Earth orbit to sustained lunar surface habitation toward Mars exploration, the need becomes more intense to supplant heritage physico-chemical unit operations employed for crewed spacecraft cabin CO2 removal, CO2 reduction, and O2 supply. The primary approach to date has been toward incremental improvement of the heritage, energy intensive process technologies used aboard the International Space Station (ISS), particularly for water electrolysis-based O2 generation. A major breakthrough is necessary to depose these energy intensive process technologies either partly or completely. This is achievable by considering the recent advances in photocatalysis. Applications are emerging for converting CO2 to useful commodity products and generating H2 from atmospheric water vapor. Considering these developments, a low power thermo-photo-catalytic process to replace the heritage high-power water electrolysis process is proposed for application to a Mars transit vehicle life support system (LSS) functional architecture. A key component in realizing this breakthrough is utilizing a catalyst substrate such as Microlith that affords high surface area and promotes mass transport to the catalyst surface. The proposed TPC oxygenator is expected to operate passively to continually renew the O2 content of the cabin atmosphere. The targeted mission for the proposed TPC oxygenator technology deployment is a 2039 Long Stay, Earth-Mars-Earth mission opportunity. This mission as defined by the Moon to Mars (M2M) 2024 review consists of 337.9 days outbound, 348.5 days in Mars vicinity, and 295.8 days return for a total 982.2-day mission. The proposed Microlith oxygenator technology, if successful, is envisioned to replace the OGA technology in the LSS process architecture with significant weight and power savings. In Phase I, we will demonstrate technical feasibility of Microlith TPC for O2 generation, interface requirements, and integration trade space and a clear path towards a prototype demonstration in Phase II will also be described in the final report.
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Last Updated Jan 10, 2025 EditorLoura Hall Related Terms
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By NASA
Modular Assembled Radiators for Nuclear Electric Propulsion Vehicles, or MARVL, aims to take a critical element of nuclear electric propulsion, its heat dissipation system, and divide it into smaller components that can be assembled robotically and autonomously in space. This is an artist’s rendering of what the fully assembled system might look like.NASA The trip to Mars and back is not one for the faint of heart. We’re not talking days, weeks, or months. But there are technologies that could help transport a crew on that round-trip journey in a relatively quick two years.
One option NASA is exploring is nuclear electric propulsion, which employs a nuclear reactor to generate electricity that ionizes, or positively charges, and electrically accelerates gaseous propellants to provide thrust to a spacecraft.
Researchers at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, are working on a system that could help bring nuclear electric propulsion one significant, technology-defining step closer to reality.
Modular Assembled Radiators for Nuclear Electric Propulsion Vehicles, or MARVL, aims to take a critical element of nuclear electric propulsion, its heat dissipation system, and divide it into smaller components that can be assembled robotically and autonomously in space.
“By doing that, we eliminate trying to fit the whole system into one rocket fairing,” said Amanda Stark, a heat transfer engineer at NASA Langley and the principal investigator for MARVL. “In turn, that allows us to loosen up the design a little bit and really optimize it.”
Loosening up the design is key, because as Stark mentioned, previous ideas called for fitting the entire nuclear electric radiator system under a rocket fairing, or nose cone, which covers and protects a payload. Fully deployed, the heat dissipating radiator array would be roughly the size of a football field. You can imagine the challenge engineers would face in getting such a massive system folded up neatly inside the tip of a rocket.
The MARVL technology opens a world of possibilities. Rather than cram the whole system into an existing rocket, this would allow researchers the flexibility to send pieces of the system to space in whatever way would make the most sense, then have it all assembled off the planet.
Once in space, robots would connect the nuclear electric propulsion system’s radiator panels, through which a liquid metal coolant, such as a sodium-potassium alloy, would flow.
While this is still an engineering challenge, it is exactly the kind of engineering challenge in-space-assembly experts at NASA Langley have been working on for decades. The MARVL technology could mark a significant first milestone. Rather than being an add-on to an existing technology, the in-space assembly component will benefit and influence the design of the very spacecraft it would serve.
“Existing vehicles have not previously considered in-space assembly during the design process, so we have the opportunity here to say, ‘We’re going to build this vehicle in space. How do we do it? And what does the vehicle look like if we do that?’ I think it’s going to expand what we think of when it comes to nuclear propulsion,” said Julia Cline, a mentor for the project in NASA Langley’s Research Directorate, who led the center’s participation in the Nuclear Electric Propulsion tech maturation plan development as a precursor to MARVL. That tech maturation plan was run out of the agency’s Space Nuclear Propulsion project at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate awarded the MARVL project through the Early Career Initiative, giving the team two years to advance the concept. Stark and her teammates are working with an external partner, Boyd Lancaster, Inc., to develop the thermal management system. The team also includes radiator design engineers from NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and fluid engineers from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After two years, the team hopes to move the MARVL design to a small-scale ground demonstration.
The idea of robotically building a nuclear propulsion system in space is sparking imaginations.
“One of our mentors remarked, ‘This is why I wanted to work at NASA, for projects like this,’” said Stark, “which is awesome because I am so happy to be involved with it, and I feel the same way.”
Additional support for MARVL comes from the agency’s Space Nuclear Propulsion project. The project’s ongoing effort is maturing technologies for operations around the Moon and near-Earth exploration, deep space science missions, and human exploration using nuclear electric propulsion and nuclear thermal propulsion.
An artist’s rendering that shows the different components of a fully assembled nuclear electric propulsion system.NASAView the full article
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By NASA
Mars: Perseverance (Mars 2020) Perseverance Home Mission Overview Rover Components Mars Rock Samples Where is Perseverance? Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Mission Updates Science Overview Objectives Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Perseverance Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 3 min read
A Rover Retrospective: Turning Trials to Triumphs in 2024
A look back at a few Mars 2020 mission highlights of 2024
Perseverance’s past year operating on the surface of Mars was filled with some of the mission’s highest highs, but also some of its greatest challenges. True to its name and its reputation as a mission that overcomes challenges, Perseverance and its team of scientists and engineers turned trials to triumphs in yet another outstanding year for the mission. There’s a lot to celebrate about Perseverance’s past year on Mars, but here are three of my top mission moments this year, in the order in which they happened.
1. SHERLOC’s cover opens
NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover captured this image of its SHERLOC instrument (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals), showing the cover mechanism of SHERLOC’s Autofocus and Context Imager camera (ACI) in a nearly open configuration. The rover acquired this image using its Left Mastcam-Z camera — one of a pair of cameras located high on the rover’s mast — on March 3, 2024 (sol 1079, or Martian day 1,079 of the Mars 2020 mission), at the local mean solar time of 12:18:41. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU In early January the SHERLOC instrument’s cover mechanism stopped responding during a routine attempt to acquire data on a rock outcrop in the Margin unit. After six weeks of team diagnostics, the SHERLOC instrument was declared offline and many of us feared that the instrument had met its end. In early March, the team made significant progress in driving the cover to a more open position. Then, to everyone’s surprise, the SHERLOC cover moved unexpectedly to a nearly completely open position during a movement of the arm on sol 1077. I remember staring in wonder at the image of the cover (taken on sol 1079), feeling real optimism for the first time that SHERLOC could be recovered. The team spent the next few months developing a new plan for operating SHERLOC with its cover open, and the instrument was declared back online at the end of June.
2. A potential biosignature at Cheyava Falls
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover captured this image of “leopard spots” on a rock nicknamed “Cheyava Falls” on July 18, 2024 — sol 1212. or the 1,212th Martian day of the mission. Running the length of the rock are large white calcium sulfate veins. Between those veins are bands of material whose reddish color suggests the presence of hematite, one of the minerals that gives Mars its distinctive rusty hue. Scientists are particularly interested in the millimeter-size, irregularly shaped light patches on the central reddish band (from lower left to upper right of the image) that resemble leopard spots. Perseverance captured the image using a camera called WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering), part of the SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument suite located on the end of Perseverance’s robotic arm. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS No top list would be complete without Perseverance’s discovery in July 2024 of a potential biosignature in the form of sub-millimeter-scale “leopard spots” at an outcrop called Cheyava Falls. These features, which formed during chemical reactions within the rock, have dark rims and light cores and occur together with organic carbon. On Earth, these chemical reactions are often driven by or associated with microbes. Although we can’t say for sure that microbes were involved in the formation of the leopard spots at Cheyava Falls, this question can be answered when Perseverance’s samples are returned to Earth. In the meantime, this rock remains one of the most compelling rocks discovered on Mars.
3. Arrival at Witch Hazel Hill
NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image at the top of Witch Hazel Hill, of the South Arm and Minnie Hill outcrops. Perseverance used its Left Navigation Camera (Navcam) — which also aids in driving — located high on the rover’s mast. The rover captured the image on Dec. 16, 2024 (sol 1359, or Martian day 1,359 of the Mars 2020 mission), at the local mean solar time of 13:26:38. NASA/JPL-Caltech Closing out 2024 on a high note, in mid-December Perseverance arrived at the top of a sequence of rock exposed on the western edge of the Jezero crater rim called Witch Hazel Hill. These rocks pre-date the formation of Jezero crater and could be amongst the oldest rocks exposed on the surface of Mars. These rocks have the potential to tell us about a period of solar system history not well-preserved on our own planet Earth, and they may record important clues about the early history and habitability of Mars. Witch Hazel Hill first caught my attention during landing site selection several years ago, when we were debating the merits of landing Perseverance in Jezero versus sites outside the crater. At the time, this area seemed just out of reach for a Jezero-focused mission, so I’m thrilled that the rover is now exploring this site!
The Mars 2020 mission had its ups and downs and a fair share of surprises during 2024, but we are looking ahead to 2025 with excitement, as Perseverance continues to explore and sample the Jezero crater rim.
Written by Katie Stack Morgan, Mars 2020 Deputy Project Scientist
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Last Updated Jan 08, 2025 Related Terms
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This photomontage shows tubes containing samples from Mars, as collected by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. The agency’s Mars Sample Return Program plans to bring these samples back to study them in state-of-the-art facilities on Earth.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS To maximize chances of successfully bringing the first Martian rock and sediment samples to Earth for the benefit of humanity, NASA announced Tuesday a new approach to its Mars Sample Return Program. The agency will simultaneously pursue two landing architectures, or strategic plans, during formulation, encouraging competition and innovation, as well as cost and schedule savings.
NASA plans to later select a single path forward for the program, which aims to better understand the mysteries of the universe, and to help determine whether the Red Planet ever hosted life. NASA is expected to confirm the program – and its design – in the second half of 2026.
“Pursuing two potential paths forward will ensure that NASA is able bring these samples back from Mars with significant cost and schedule saving compared to the previous plan,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “These samples have the potential to change the way we understand Mars, our universe, and – ultimately – ourselves. I’d like to thank the team at NASA and the strategic review team, led by Dr. Maria Zuber, for their work.”
In September 2024, the agency accepted 11 studies from the NASA community and industry on how best to return Martian samples to Earth. A Mars Sample Return Strategic Review team was charged with assessing the studies and then recommending a primary architecture for the campaign, including associated cost and schedule estimates.
“NASA’s rovers are enduring Mars’ harsh environment to collect ground-breaking science samples,” said Nicky Fox, who leads NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “We want to bring those back as quickly as possible to study them in state-of-the-art facilities. Mars Sample Return will allow scientists to understand the planet’s geological history and the evolution of climate on this barren planet where life may have existed in the past and shed light on the early solar system before life began here on Earth. This will also prepare us to safely send the first human explorers to Mars.”
During formulation, NASA will proceed with exploring and evaluating two distinct means of landing the payload platform on Mars. The first option will leverage previously flown entry, descent, and landing system designs, namely the sky crane method, demonstrated with the Curiosity and Perseverance missions. The second option will capitalize on using new commercial capabilities to deliver the lander payload to the surface of Mars.
For both potential options, the mission’s landed platform will carry a smaller version of the Mars Ascent Vehicle. The platform’s solar panels will be replaced with a radioisotope power system that can provide power and heat through the dust storm season at Mars, allowing for reduced complexity.
The orbiting sample container will hold 30 of the sample tubes containing samples the Perseverance lander has been collecting from the surface of Mars. A redesign of the sample loading system on the lander, which will place the samples into the orbiting sample container, simplifies the backward planetary protection implementation by eliminating the accumulation of dust on the outside of the sample container.
Both mission options rely on a capture, containment and return system aboard ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) Earth Return Orbiter to capture the orbiting sample container in Mars orbit. ESA is evaluating NASA’s plan.
For more information on NASA’s exploration of Mars, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/mars
-end-
Meira Bernstein / Dewayne Washington
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
meira.b.bernstein@nasa.gov / dewayne.a.washington@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jan 07, 2025 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
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