NASA to convene review board to assess plans to return Mars samples to Earth

NASA is preparing to undertake one of the most difficult missions in human history - bringing samples of rock and soil collected from the Martian surface by NASA's Mars Perseverance rover back to Earth. To achieve this goal, the agency has announced that it will convene an independent review board (IRB) to assess current plans and goals for the Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign.

This is the second IRB for the MSR program and will provide added confidence that the program will not exceed guidelines following confirmation, NASA said in a statement. The board, chaired by Orlando Figueroa, retired deputy center director for science and technology at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, will include experts in relevant science, technical and programmatic fields and is expected to produce a final report in late August.

The MSR program is a joint endeavour between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) to return samples from Mars back to Earth for detailed analysis, which will provide scientists with valuable insights into the planet's history and potential for past or present life.

The program will be conducted in several stages, each involving cutting-edge technology and innovative techniques. It would involve a Sample Return Lander that will land near or in Jezero Crater, where the Mars Perseverance rover landed. The samples will then be loaded onto the Mars Ascent Vehicle, a small rocket that will launch the football-sized container into Mars orbit, by the Perseverance rover.

Once the cache is launched off the Red Planet, it will be captured in Mars orbit by another spacecraft, which will then bring these samples back to Earth safely and securely in the early to mid-2030s.

But that's not all. The MSR campaign also involves two Ingenuity-like helicopters, called Sample Recovery Helicopters, that will provide a secondary capability to retrieve samples on the surface of Mars if the Perseverance rover fails to directly load the samples into the lander.