NASA's ambitious endeavor to bring geological samples from Mars back to Earth for analysis is encountering significant challenges, as outlined in a recent audit report by the agency's Office of Inspector General (OIG).
The Mars Sample Return Program Faces Potential Setbacks
The Mars Sample Return (MSR) Program was designed to retrieve geological samples from Mars for scientific examination but is now facing hurdles in terms of design, cost, and scheduling, according to the audit findings.
A critical phase of the MSR Program, known as the Formulation Phase, which involves establishing a stable design and realistic cost and schedule estimates, is experiencing delays and complications.
UNSPECIFIED: In this concept illustration provided by NASA, NASA's Perseverance (Mars 2020) rover will store rock and soil samples in sealed tubes on the planet's surface for future missions to retrieve in the area known as Jezero crater on the planet Mars. A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life.
The Core Cruise and Return Stage (CCRS), a key component of the program responsible for transporting Martian samples back to Earth, encountered schedule and design issues, leading to additional costs of approximately $200 million and a one-year delay.
One of the main reasons behind these setbacks is inadequate guidance during the pre-formulation phase, which is crucial for making key architectural decisions.
The audit report claimed that NASA's practices for large missions like MSR lack sufficient guidance, as highlighted in a Large Mission Study conducted in October 2020.
Moreover, the trajectory of the MSR Program's life-cycle cost estimate has raised concerns about its affordability. The estimated cost has escalated from $2.5 to $3 billion in July 2020 to $7.4 billion as of June 2023.
According to the report, factors contributing to this increase include the complexity of large missions, initial over-optimism, suboptimal design decisions, and challenges in team performance.
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Coordination Challenges Between NASA and ESA
The audit added that coordination challenges between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) further complicate the formulation of the MSR Program.
While formal communication processes are in place, issues such as schedule transparency, asynchronous design progress, and mass allocation have arisen due to differing operational approaches and agency funding mechanisms.
"Accordingly, it is critical that before the MSR Program is approved to proceed from formulation into development, viable alternatives to the Program's mission architecture are considered-including mission launch and sample return alternatives-as well as the value of the samples returned, the Program's schedule, life-cycle cost estimate, and the Agency's historic leadership position in space exploration," the report reads.
The recommendations of the report include ensuring a stable design for the CCRS before setting cost and schedule estimates, incorporating program complexity and performance into estimates, providing potential launch scenarios with associated cost and schedule estimates, and assessing the effectiveness of pre-formulation guidance for large missions and implementing corrective actions.
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