A brand new video reveals how a workforce of NASA and European Area Company (ESA) spacecraft plan to relay Martian rock samples to Earth.
Key moments of the unprecedented and extremely complicated Mars Pattern Return (MSR) mission are detailed in a 106-second NASA/ESA video (opens in new tab), which begins off with a spacecraft encased in an aeroshell dashing towards Mars.
NASA’s Perseverance rover — which has been busy amassing samples since touching down on the Pink Planet in February 2021— provides off a considerably anthropomorphized really feel because it watches NASA’s MSR lander descend and land close by.
Associated: 12 amazing photos from the Perseverance rover’s 1st year on Mars
Perseverance approaches the lander, transferring its valuable and pristine samples to a pattern containment system aboard the lander. These are then blasted into Mars orbit by a two-stage rocket, whose second stage meets up with ESA’s MSR orbiter.
The orbiter then fires its engines to go for house. The ultimate moments of the video present the discharge of the sample-containing Earth Entry Car simply forward of arrival at Earth.
The animation was created with contributions from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Goddard Area Flight Heart, Marshall Area Flight Heart and ESA.
Not proven is how a pair of Ingenuity-like helicopters with added robotic arms might be used to gather samples cached and dropped by Perseverance — a backup plan that NASA will enact to cowl the MSR mission in case the rover can not attain the lander. Earlier plans to include a European fetch rover into the mission have been deserted.
The MSR lander, Mars rocket and ESA orbiter are presently scheduled to launch round 2028, with a touchdown on the Pink Planet in 2031 and return to Earth in 2033.
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