NASA will spend billions of dollars to return Martian samples

According to NASA, the cost of the project to return Martian samples costs billions of dollars. The head of NASA’s science programs, who worked on this project before stepping down from this post, had previously expressed concern about this issue. At that time, the cost of this project was calculated at 4.4 billion dollars. But recent investigations show that this figure is higher than the calculated figure.

According to Tekna technology and technology news service, news sources say that Richard Cook, the director of this program, and Jeff Gramling, the head of this department, have informed about the costs and their increase during a meeting with NASA senior managers. According to them, now the cost of returning these samples has doubled and has reached a huge figure of 8 to 9 billion dollars. Even this figure does not include the costs related to the launch, the five-year mission and operations management, as well as the construction of a new facility for testing. Probably, considering all the cases, this figure will reach 10 billion dollars.

NASA is going to do this mission with the European Space Agency, and preliminary agreements have been made for this issue. In this mission, a sample lander will be built and sent to Mars by 2028. Also, the Mars Ascent Vehicle rocket made by Lockheed Martin will be used to launch samples out of the atmosphere.

Upon arrival of this rocket, it will be placed in the orbit of another orbiter and will receive the dropped samples. This orbit is built by the European Space Agency. This spacecraft will also give the samples to another spacecraft to finally reach the earth and reach the hands of scientists.