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It turns out the space industryhas a fortune of ideason how to improve NASA’s$11 billion , 15 - class programme to collect and return sampling from Mars . Seven of these proposals have caught the agency ’s attention .
herald today , NASA has present $ 1.5 million contracts to seven company to further grow their programme for the revamped Mars Sample Return mission . The awardees , and the title of their proposals , are as follow :
A sum of 10 work — including two NASA centers and the way ’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Applied Physics Laboratory — were selected to bring on field of study . These were select after the agency put out a postulation for proposals in April .
The titles do n’t really say very much at all about the several proposals — for example , it ’s no surprise that SpaceX is offering up Starship for a mission to Mars , but how exactly the vehicle will be enable to gather and recall samples is still undecipherable . That ’s the whole point of the subject period : to help oneself NASA see whether there are viable alternative mission innovation or mission elements to bring Martian sample home safely .
According to the request for proposal , studies could be for complete renovation of the mission invention , or for design that include elements of NASA ’s MSR missionary work or NASA ’s Artemis programme .
NASA turned to secret diligence after finally admitting that its architecture for MSR is fabulously complicated . In fact , it ’s a bit of a misnomer to even call it a single missionary post , give that the plan involved the Perseverance rover , a novel sample retrieval lander , a Eruca vesicaria sativa call a Mars Ascent Vehicle , and an Earth return artificial satellite . These vehicles would need to work out in perfect synchronicity to garner and transport the samples .
Last class , an independent review board advocate that NASA revisit the mission design given the concerns about the technical feature of speech and the high cost . So the agency is doing just that : In documents interrelate to the RFP , NASA said it ’s expect for a less complex mission design and one that would reduce the full costs to the federal agency . The agency also enounce it was looking for the early possible issue date .
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