NASA BFG ON MARS SAMPLE RETURN INDEPENDENT REVIEW BOARD RPT, Nov 10, 2020, virtual, 11:00 am ET

NASA will hold a media briefing at 11:00 am ET on November 10, 2020 to discuss the report of the Mars Sample Return Independent Review Board.  The report itself will be released at 9:00 am ET that day on the agency’s Reports and Transcripts website.

NASA’s Mars Perseverance mission now enroute to Mars is the first of three spacecraft needed to return a sample of Mars to Earth.  It will collect the samples, which will be retrieved in future years by two other spacecraft to be built by NASA and the European Space Agency.  NASA also will have to build a biologically secure facility on Earth where the samples can be safely stored and studied.

NASA established an Independent Review Board (IRB) to assess the plan and advise NASA on whether it is on the right track.

The media briefing is at 11:00 am ET and will be available to the public on NASA Live.  Participants are:

• Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington
• Jeffrey Gramling, Mars Sample Return program director, NASA Headquarters, Washington
• David Thompson, MSR IRB chair, retired president of Orbital ATK, Reston, Virginia
• Maria Zuber, MSR IRB member and Standing Review Board Chair, Vice President for Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
• Peter Theisinger, MSR IRB member, employee at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California