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.
As Douglas Adams put it: most people where only concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper. The amount of small green pieces of printable paper is completely and utterly irrelevant in comparison to the next milestone mankind can achieve and must achieve to survive. (My personal, admittedly strong, opinion of course)
If you read the reports…
Normally JPL outsource their Mars mission hardware to Lockheed Martin. For some reason they have decided to do Mars Sample Return in house. The reports argue JPL hasn’t built the necessary in house experience and should have worked with LM.
Secondly JPL is suffering a staff shortage which is affecting other projects and the Mars Sample Return is making the problem worse.
Lastly if an organisation stops performing an action it “forgets” how to do it. You can rebuild the capability but it takes time.
A team arbitrary declaring they are experts and suddenly decideding they will do it is one that will have to relearn skills/knowledge on a big expensive high profile project. The project will either fail (and be declared a success) or masses of money will be spent to compensate for the teams learning.
Either situation is not ideal
Thank you for providing this interesting insight. I didn’t know any of this. I hope JPL will be able to build up the necessary in house experience again to not having to depend on contractors. Maybe in the distant future mankind will be able to actually work together on this problem space instead of being busy with corporate infighting.
It would be cool if NASA’s budget was raised, but in the meantime we have to deal with the reality that a flagship mission going way over budget takes money away from other programs.