NASA has announced that it is sending two Ingenuity-inspired helicopters to Mars. The objective is for the aircraft to collect rock samples. Seventeen months after it landed on Mars, for example, Perseverance collected 11 samples from various regions of the planet.
When they returned to Earth, the equipment helped scientists establish a geological record. to understand the environmental evolution of Mars. Buoyed by the incredible success of its tiny Ingenuity drone, which has now completed a staggering 29 flights, NASA also said it will begin its long-awaited Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission in 2027 with the first rock samples from an alien planet.
NASA also revealed that it will launch an Earth Return Orbiter in Fall 2027, a Sample Retrieval Lander in Summer 2028, and that these samples would arrive on Earth in 2033. This illustration above shows a concept for a NASA’s proposed Mars probe and rocket combination that would play a key role in returning samples of material from Mars collected by Perseverance to Earth.
This Sample Retrieval Lander would take a small rocket (about 10 feet, or 3 meters high) called the Mars Ascent Vehicle to the Martian surface. After using a robotic arm to load the rover’s sealed sample tubes into a container in the rocket’s nose cone, the spacecraft would launch the Mars Ascent Vehicle into orbit around the Red Planet.
