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NASA kick-starts a fresh push to bring Mars samples home
China is making progress on its Tianwen-3 Mars Sample Return mission, which
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A long-term goal at NASA has been the ability to robotically haul back to Earth specimens from the Red Planet.
NASA is kickstarting a new initiative for its troubled Mars Sample Return (MSR) program, called the Perseverance Sample Retrieval Architecture, or PSRA in space shorthand. The plan is to establish a fresh NASA strategy for gathering Mars samples collected by the Perseverance rover and launching them back to Earth.
The PSRA initiative was noted on Nov. 9 by Tiffany Morgan, director of the NASA Mars Exploration Program (MEP), during the virtual meeting of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG).
Morgan noted that there will be a PSRA strategy team kickoff in January 2027 with a final report due in winter 2027-2028.
The backdrop to the PSRA activity is that there's one busy rover already on the Red Planet snagging and bagging samples.
NASA's Perseverance Mars rover remains on the prowl within Jezero Crater following its touchdown in February 2021. That car-sized robot has been grabbing select specimens from across the area and gingerly dropping the sealed pick-me-ups on the surface of Mars, as well as stuffing them inside the rover itself.
Those collectibles may well hold signs of past life on the enigmatic, dusty and foreboding Red Planet.
NASA and the European Space Agency have for years been intently plotting out plans to send future spacecraft to Mars and haul those Perseverance-plucked bits, pieces, and sniffs of atmosphere to Earth for rigorous inspection here on Earth using state-of-the-art equipment.