“We were a relatively loud voice on MSR, because we just saw a program and a capability that could be solved,” Beck said in his recent interview with Ars. “The cost estimates for the MSR and all the rest of it were absolutely nonsense. I think anyone knows I have a bit of a soft spot for planetary science. So with the MSR, I saw a whole bunch of Nobel Prizes up there on the surface, and not bringing them home was just criminal. As part of that, we studied the whole architecture very, very, very closely, and it was clear to us that a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter would be an important part of it.”
not dead yet
After all, the Trump White House and the US Congress, as part of the budget process, canceled the Mars sample return mission in January.
Only, maybe it’s not dead yet.
In March, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation unanimously passed a new NASA Authorization Act, calling for the resumption of Mars sample returns. According to this legislation, NASA “shall establish a new Mars Sample Return Program within the Science Mission Directorate for the purpose of returning scientifically curated samples from Mars to Earth.” According to the bill, the cost of this mission should not exceed $8 billion.
Although this law has not been passed in the entire US Congress, we can still draw some clues from it. Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is chairman of the committee that wrote the bill, and he likely supports the revival of Mars Sample Return because it would bring new facilities and prestige to the Johnson Space Center in Texas. If Rocket Lab had received the contract to build the Mars Orbiter, it would have had to move forward in the contracting process to develop the remaining sample return missions. These vehicles, including the Mars Ascent Vehicle, may be tested in Mississippi.
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