Figueroa to Lead Second Independent Review of Mars Sample Return Mission

NASA announced today that Orlando Figueroa, once NASA’s “Mars Czar,” will chair the second independent review of the Mars Sample Return mission planned for launch later this decade. Scientists are excited about bringing samples of Mars back to Earth for analysis, but also concerned that the high cost will hurt other NASA science projects.

Returning samples from Mars is a long-held dream for the planetary science community, but technical complexity and high cost have relegated it to aspirational status until now. The Mars Perseverance rover at this moment is collecting the samples that will end up in a specially-designed containment facility here on Earth a little over a decade from now if all goes according to plan.

But the technical complexity and cost cannot be ignored. The joint NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission requires sending a NASA spacecraft to land on Mars to retrieve the samples from Perseverance and put them onto a Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) to rocket them into orbit around Mars.

Two tiny helicopters will be along on the mission as backups in case Perseverance is unable to make the trek to the MAV. They will be modeled on the extremely successful Ingenuity helicopter. Sent along with Perseverance as a technology demonstrator, the hope was that Ingenuity could survive five flights, but it far surpassed that goal and just completed its 50th flight.

Once in orbit, the samples will robotically transfer into a NASA Capture, Containment, and Retrieval System (CCRS) on ESA’s Earth Return Orbiter (ERO) for the trip back to Earth. At the moment, the plan is to launch ERO in 2027 and the lander/MAV in 2028, but schedule is one of the issues the new IRB will take a look at.

It is not uncommon for NASA to use outside experts to take a critical look at projects to help ensure cost and schedule estimates are realistic, but having two IRBs for a single project is rare. The first MSR IRB, chaired by retired Orbital ATK President David Thompson, concluded in 2020 that the project was too ambitious as designed at the time.

Many changes have been made since then, but concerns remain. NASA decided to establish this second IRB to look at the program as it is now prior to its confirmation review when NASA commits to schedule and cost, a milestone called Key Decision Point-C or KDP-C. NASA recently decided to delay KDP-C until FY2024.

The IRB is tasked with “providing an assessment of the current status as well as recommendations to maximize the probability of mission success – scientifically and technically – within guidelines.”

The FY2024 budget request includes $949 million for MSR, just the beginning of a ramp-up in funding that will be needed. The request includes projections for future years of $700 million in FY2025, $600 million in FY2026, $612 million in FY2027 and $628 million in FY2028, but warns those figures are expected to grow and choices will have to be made to reduce funding for other science projects or descope MSR.

At a meeting of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG) this week, Jeff Gramling, MSR Program Director at NASA Headquarters, said the only descope option would be to eliminate one of the two helicopters and that alone would not be enough to fill the gap in expected funding requirements.

NASA’s science program is guided by Decadal Surveys produced by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine every 10 years — a decade. Mars Sample Return was the top priority of the last two Decadal Surveys for planetary science, but the most recent report in 2022 said that if the cost exceeds $5.3 billion or more than 35 percent of the budget for the Planetary Science Division (PSD) in any given year “NASA should work with the Administration and Congress to ensure a budget augmentation to ensure the success of this strategic mission.”

PSD Director Lori Glaze has said at several advisory committee meetings that MSR has not exceeded that 35 percent threshold in her part of the budget, but NASA is reallocating funding from other science projects to MSR.

Science Mission Directorate head Nicky Fox said at a recent Town Hall meeting that the FY2024 budget request proposes cutting funds in heliophysics and astrophysics to pay for MSR.

The science budget is at a record high already and would rise to $8.3 billion if Congress approves the FY2024 request, but inflation and lingering supply chain issues eat away at that increase. With all the demands on the science budget, the potential impact of rising MSR costs is a heavy weight.

The IRB has a tough task ahead, but Figueroa has decades of experience in leading Mars missions and advisory committees. He retired from NASA in 2010 after serving as the “Mars Czar” or Director for Mars Exploration at NASA Headquarters when the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity were developed. Later he was Deputy Director for Science and Technology at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.