Lockheed Martin snags $194m NASA contract to retrieve Mars rock samples
Lockheed Martin has snagged a $194m NASA contract to build its Mars rocket, which will return rock samples to Earth sometime in the 2030s.
The aerospace and deface manufacturer has already cemented itself within the space sector, both state and commercially funded, as it begins work on a separate commercial space station project, known as Nanoracks, in collaboration with Voyager Space.
The “small, lightweight rocket” will be the first to take off from a foreign planet to bring “rock, sediment and atmospheric samples from the surface of the Red Planet,” NASA said in a statement.
The price of the deal is not yet concreate, and is currently just a potential value for the so-called Mars Ascent Vehicle.
“The pieces are coming together to bring home the first samples from another planet. Once on Earth, they can be studied by state-of-the-art tools too complex to transport into space,” associate administrator for science at NASA’s Washington headquarters, Thomas Zurbuchen said.
The Mars mission is set to be launched in 2026, and will pick up samples left behind by Perseverance, a rover that has been on the Red Planet since last February, after launching in July 2020.
The rocket is then expected to take off, and orbit Mars, until another vessel will be sent there to collect the samples and journey back to Earth.
The last vessel, as well as the rover that will retrieve the samples, will be developed by the European Space Agency (ESA).
ESA’s Mars chief engineer, Albert Haldemann told City PM: “ESA’s Earth Return Orbiter (ERO), Sample Fetch Rover (SFR) and Sample Transfer Arm (STA) contributions to the joint ESA-NASA Mars Sample Return (MSR) program all have selected prime contractors: Airbus Defence and Space France for ERO, ADS UK for SFR, and Leonardo Italy for STA .
“ERO completed its Preliminary Design Review last spring, SFR will have its PDR later this year, while STA is holding its System Requirements Review in the next months, all on schedule for returning samples from Mars in the early- to mid-2030s.”