Posted: September 21, 2023 8:17 pm ET | Last Updated: September 21, 2023 8:17 pm ET | A second Independent Review Board on the NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return mission concludes that the mission cannot be completed on the cost and schedule NASA advertises. The current design would cost $8-9.6 billion and alternatives could cost as much as $11 billion. Launches cannot take place until at least 2030. The IRB-2, chaired by Orlando Figueroa, also criticized how NASA is managing the program and communicating the importance of returning samples from the Red Planet.
I suspect a full-scale lab is a little more capable than a pocket lab bolted on a rover
I think a real key will be getting geologists on the ground there. The productivity comparison is something crazy, like, an astronaut could do a few years of rover work in a week.
Wow, a bigger gap than I would have guessed.