Daily Press

Mars rocks are a science prize US can’t afford to lose

- By Paul Byrne and Vicky Hamilton Los Angeles Times Paul Byrne is an associate professor of earth, environmen­tal and planetary science at Washington University in St. Louis. Vicky Hamilton is an institute scientist at Southwest Research Institute in Boulde

NASA does difficult, inspiring and ambitious things — and it does them, in the immortal words of President John F. Kennedy, because they are hard. NASA’s most ambitious planetary project yet is Mars Sample Return, a partnershi­p with the European Space Agency to roboticall­y collect and bring back to Earth scientific­ally invaluable rocks from Mars for study in labs here. But the mission is in trouble.

Mars Sample Return represents the culminatio­n of decades of planning by the planetary science community, and it has been the top-ranked scientific priority of the last two Decadal Surveys of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineerin­g, and Medicine. The surveys are exhaustive reports written by dozens of scientists over many months, designed to help NASA chart its agenda in 10-year increments.

There are compelling reasons to bring samples back from Mars.

The technologi­es required for retrieving soil and rocks from Mars will underpin those needed for NASA’s Moon to Mars initiative, a grand plan to eventually send humans to Mars and bring them safely home. The samples have the potential to revolution­ize our understand­ing of the Red Planet’s geological history and whether it might ever have hosted life. They will offer vital informatio­n about the environmen­t Mars astronauts would encounter, and they will give us brandnew insight into the processes that shape planets generally.

The first phase of Mars Sample Return has already begun. In February 2021, the rover Perseveran­ce landed on Mars tasked with collecting air, rock cores and soil that would ultimately be returned to Earth. Equipped with a sophistica­ted sampling system, Perseveran­ce has already filled 23 of its collection tubes and has 15 more.

The envisioned next phase is sending a Sample Retrieval Lander to rendezvous with Perseveran­ce, transferri­ng the samples and then launching them into space, to be picked up by an Earth Return Orbiter furnished by ESA.

Yet how, when, or even if those next phases will happen is far from certain.

Faced with rising costs, NASA commission­ed an independen­t review of the entire program in 2023. The review didn’t pull punches, finding that the likely cost of the project had ballooned, its organizati­onal structure wasn’t working, and that NASA hadn’t effectivel­y communicat­ed to the science community or the public why the massive effort was worthwhile in the first place. Despite that, the review emphasized that the scientific and geopolitic­al value of Mars Sample Return couldn’t be overstated, and that the project could be made affordable.

Still, the Senate threatened to reduce the project’s budget substantia­lly and even cancel it outright, which starkly contrasted with the House’s proposal to support the program fully. Congress now proposes to fund it at some level, but this uncertaint­y has driven NASA to “ramp back” its Mars Sample Return-related activities. As a result, Pasadena’s

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA’s lead center for the project, laid off more than 600 staff members last month.

Now Congress has a choice: It can turn its back on Mars Sample Return or commit to funding the boldest robotic planetary science effort humanity has yet undertaken.

Abandoning the project would not only sacrifice work already underway, it would be a major blow to the Decadal Survey process, hurting not just planetary science but the other science communitie­s that have relied on the survey process for establishi­ng scientific and funding priorities going as far back as the 1960s.

Congress should sufficient­ly fund NASA to realize the generation­al goal of returning to Earth samples from Mars. For a fraction of the country’s annual non-defense discretion­ary spending — or about 5% of what Americans spend on pizza each year — the United States can set its sights on the Red Planet like never before. In doing so, we can answer fundamenta­l questions of planetary science, bolster our relationsh­ips with our internatio­nal partners and inspire the next generation of explorers.

Mars Sample Return is hard, but that isn’t its problem. For NASA, and for the United States, it’s perhaps the single best reason to do it.

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