Skip to main content

NASA video reveals complexity of Mars Sample Return mission

NASA has shared a video showing the complex series of steps required to bring the first samples of Mars rock to Earth.

The space agency’s Perseverance rover is currently drilling and caching samples from inside Mars’ Jezero Crater as part of a research effort to find out if microbial life ever existed on the red planet.

Mars Sample Return Conceptual Animation

At the end of its mission, Perseverance will set aside those samples in sealed containers for another mission to collect later this decade.

Recommended Videos

As the video shows, the Mars Sample Return mission, which will be carried out by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency), will involve multiple stages and multiple vehicles.

Here’s a brief summary of the plan:

  • First, a rocket will launch a spacecraft from Earth to Mars.
  • When it gets close, the spacecraft will send a lander to the martian surface.
  • The lander will set down a rover, which will collect the sealed samples of Mars rock gathered by Perseverance.
  • A small rocket will fire the gathered samples into Mars orbit, where they will be transferred to a waiting orbiter.
  • The orbiter will bring the Mars samples to Earth by launching them inside a capsule toward the end of its journey.

In an online post about the challenging mission, NASA says the team will have plenty of hurdles to overcome to successfully return the samples.

For example, it has to ensure the samples are securely sealed in order to prevent the material from becoming contaminated on its return journey, and to ensure it doesn’t contaminate Earth’s environment, although NASA says there’s a “low risk of bringing anything alive to Earth.”

It means engineers have to seal and sterilize the sample container without damaging important chemical signatures in the gathered material. The team is currently considering a method called brazing, which involves melting a metal alloy into a liquid that glues metal together.

“Among our biggest technical challenges right now is that inches away from metal that’s melting at about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (or 538 degrees Celsius) we have to keep these extraordinary Mars samples below the hottest temperature they might have experienced on Mars, which is about 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius),” said Brendan Feehan, an engineer for the system that will capture, contain, and deliver the samples to Earth aboard the orbiter. “Initial results from the testing of our brazing solution have affirmed that we’re on the right path.”

If successful, the technique could even be used for future sample-return missions to Europa (a moon orbiting Jupiter) or Enceladus (one of Saturn’s moons), “where we could collect and return fresh ocean plume samples that could contain living extraterrestrial organisms,” Feehan said, adding: “So we need to figure this out.”

There’s clearly still plenty of work to be done, but by 2030 a small capsule containing Mars samples could be hurtling toward Earth, providing scientists with many years’ worth of exciting research material.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Check out this incredible cloud atlas of Mars
Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud (AMEC): This elongated cloud has formed as a result of wind encountering the Arsia Mons mountains. It forms almost every day during a specific season, from early morning until noon.

Photographing a beautiful sky is a great passion for many here on Earth, but it can be just as striking on another planet too. Researchers recently presented a stunning new "cloud atlas" of Mars: a database containing 20 years' worth of images of clouds and storms observed on the red planet.

The cloud atlas is available online, inviting you to browse the many images of martian weather captured by the Mars Express spacecraft. This European Space Agency mission has been in orbit around Mars since 2005, and has taken hundreds of images of the planet using its High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) instrument.

Read more
How to watch NASA’s oldest active astronaut launch to the ISS on Wednesday
NASA astronaut Don Pettit.

NASA Astronaut Don Pettit Soyuz MS-26 Launch

Don Pettit isn't your average senior citizen. Instead of enjoying life in the slow lane, he's getting ready for a rocket ride to the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday.

Read more
Intuitive Machines to carry NASA experiments to the moon in 2027
An artist’s concept of Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lunar lander on the Moon’s South Pole.

Intuitive Machines, the company that earlier this year managed the first lunar landing by a commercial entity (partly successfully) will be returning to the moon with more NASA payloads. As part of NASA's CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) program, Intuitive Machines will design and build a lander to launch to the moon's south pole, and NASA will pay $117 million for it to carry six science payloads.

This is part of NASA's broader effort to embrace the burgeoning private space industry by becoming a customer of space companies rather than designing and building its own spacecraft. The aim is for Intuitive Machines to arrive at the moon's south pole in 2027, ahead of the Artemis missions that will see humans return to the lunar surface. The company will also be launching another lunar lander called Athena later this year, with a third launch planned next year as well.

Read more