ESA has just awarded Airbus a €491 million contract to design and build the Earth Return Orbiter. This ship will have the mission of bringing back to Earth the Martian samples collected on the red planet by the rover Perseverance.
A few months ago, NASA launched its long-awaited Mars 2020 mission. After landing, the Perseverance rover will be deployed to search for traces of past life on the planet. There are also plans to seal the most promising rock samples for future return to Earth where they can be analyzed with state-of-the-art instruments.
As part of this mission, named Mars Sample Return , NASA will collaborate with the European Space Agency (ESA). Initially, as we have just said, the Perseverance rover will be responsible for storing several samples in a series of small metal cylinders. These will then be left on the surface waiting to be picked up.
Then, in 2026 , NASA will send a new lander to the red planet:the Sample Retrieval Lander (SRL). Once on the surface (summer 2028), this will deploy the Sample Fetch Rover (SFR), whose objective will be to collect the metal cylinders set aside by Perseverance. These samples will then be deposited in a small rocket, the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), which will then take off in the spring of 2029 to place itself in orbit around the red planet .
Meanwhile, in the summer of 2028, a probe will take off from Earth to collect these small cylinders directly from orbit, before bringing them back to Earth.
It has recently been known that the ship, the Earth Return Orbiter , will be built by Airbus Defense and Space. ESA has just awarded a contract worth 491 million euros to the company for the design and construction of this orbiter. Note that Airbus must also contribute to the creation of the Fetch rover .
If all goes as planned, the return of samples will take place in spring 2032 . The Earth Entry Vehicle will be released while the rest of the orbiter continues on its way to orbit the Sun. The entry vehicle must normally land in the Utah desert . The samples will then be collected and placed in quarantine before being analyzed.
"We bring all the strength of our experience to ensure the success of this mission “, says Jean-Marc Nasr, head of Airbus Space Systems. "Bringing samples from Mars back to Earth will be an extraordinary feat that will take interplanetary science to a whole new level."
In the meantime, know that an application allows you to follow the trajectory of the Perseverance rover, still on its way to the red planet.
As a reminder, the Mars 2020 mission is due to arrivein Jezero crater on February 18 . The exploration area is promising. Recent work has indeed suggested the presence of hydrated silica in the bottom of this crater. It is a particularly effective mineral for the preservation of terrestrial biosignatures. If microbes ever evolved on Mars, then it would be theoretically possible that their traces could still be seen.
