SALON

Wednesday, Sep 26, 2012 1:15 PM UTC

Astronauts may play role in Mars robotic missions

By

Topics: From the Wires,

WASHINGTON (AP) — NASA’s future plans to explore Mars may end up using astronauts as space messengers.

The new idea surfaced as a special team looking for a new Mars robotic exploration plan released a preliminary report Tuesday.

One of the option calls for a Martian robotic rover to collect rocks on the red planet. Later, astronauts in a newly built spaceship would be used to pick them up from a cosmic delivery point somewhere between Earth and Mars and return them home.

The report gives the space agency several options with no specific timing for future missions and no decision is expected until next year. The new plan is needed because budget cuts earlier this year killed two future robotic flights.

The space agency has so far explored Mars with orbiters and robots, like the rover Curiosity that landed last month. The ultimate goal has been to get a robot to collect rocks and Martian soil to send to Earth for more detailed scientific examination.

Separately, NASA is working on new missions for astronauts to explore away from Earth, with an ultimate goal of sending them to Mars sometime in the 2030s.

The NASA team proposed combining both dreams, getting astronauts involved in Martian exploration earlier. But they wouldn’t exactly go to Mars itself. The astronauts would go somewhere between Mars and Earth and pick up the rocks left by a spacecraft that carried them off Mars.

That plan takes advantage of the new rocket and spaceship system for astronauts that should be ready in the next decade, said NASA associate administrator for sciences John Grunsfeld.

It also would lessen contamination worries about the Martian rocks. Scientists want to make sure that the Martian samples could not bring alien germs to Earth and that Earth organisms don’t contaminate the Martian sample, Grunsfeld said.

And it would help the mission to land humans on Mars because it “looks a lot like sending a crew to Mars and returning them safely,” Grunsfeld said.

The planning team looked at a few options for a Mars sample return mission:

—Send a bunch of spacecraft to Mars — a rover, a launcher to return home, an orbiter — in several launches.

—Package all those spacecraft into one or two launches that would save money but increase risk of failure.

—Send a bunch of small rovers to look around different spots of Mars to find the best samples and then design a system to collect and return those rocks.

Before that can happen, NASA still has to decide what robotic or orbiter mission it wants to send to Mars in 2018, if any. It’s a time when Earth and the red planet will be close and save money on fuel costs. Grunsfeld said NASA only has about $800 million budgeted for that, which is not enough for a major rover.

___

Online

NASA’s Mars planning group: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/marsplanning/home/index.html

More Seth Borenstein.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • A missing poster hangs on a tree outside the Cleveland home of Amanda Berry Wednesday. Berry and two other women, Michelle Knight and Gina DeJesus, made a daring escape this week after being held captive for more than a decade.
    Credit: AP/Tony Dejak

  • Elvis Rafael Rodriguez and Emir Yasser Yeje offer their best impression of  Eric B. & Rakim. On Thursday, New York prosecutors identified the pair as members of an international gang that robbed $45 million in a matter of hours by hacking into a database of prepaid debit cards and draining ATM machines around the world.
    Credit: AP

  • New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie walks to a podium during the groundbreaking ceremony for the Technology Enhanced Accelerated Learning Center at Essex County Newark Tech in Newark, N.J., Tuesday. Christie made less flattering headlines this week after undergoing a secret stomach surgery to curb his weight.
    Credit: AP/Julio Cortez

  • Workers stand outside the Tung Hai Sweater Ltd. factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday after a fire broke out in its 11-story building. Eight people were killed in the blaze.
    Credit: AP/Ismail Ferdous

  • Workers rescue a woman trapped for 17 days in the rubble of a garment factory building in Saver, Bangladesh, Friday. The building's collapse was the worst industrial disaster in the country's history, killing more than 1,000 people.
    Credit: AP

  • Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford gives his victory speech Tuesday in Mt. Pleasant, S.C., after winning back his old congressional seat in the state's first district.
    Credit: AP/Rainier Ehrhardt

  • Jodi Arias reacts in Maricopa Country Superior Court Wednesday after being found guilty of first-degree murder in the gruesome killing of her one-time boyfriend, Travis Alexander. Arias has subsequently said she wants the death penalty, claiming she'd "prefer to die sooner than later."
    Credit: AP/The Arizona Republic/Rob Schumacher

  • Ariel Castro stands for his mug shot Thursday at the Cuyahoga County Corrections Center, where he is being held on $8 million bail. The former bus driver is accused of imprisoning three young women and beating them repeatedly over a period of 10 years.
    Credit: AP/Cuyahoga County

  • Charles Ramsey addresses the media Monday after helping rescue three women held captive in Cleveland for more than a decade. Ramsey's hero portraiture has been complicated by revelations of his own domestic violence record.
    Credit: AP/The Plain Dealer/Scott Shaw

  • Michael B. Donley, Secretary of the Air Force, testifies during a Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday. The military branch was rocked this week after its chief sexual assault prevention officer was charged with sexual battery.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations