It turns out the space industry has a lot of ideas on how to improve NASA’s $11 billion, 15-year plan to collect and return samples from Mars.
Announced today, NASA has awarded $1.5 million contracts to seven companies to further develop their plans for the revamped Mars Sample Return mission.
According to the request for proposal, studies could be for complete overhauls of the mission design, or for designs that include elements of NASA’s MSR mission or NASA’s Artemis program.
NASA turned to private industry after finally admitting that its architecture for MSR is incredibly complicated.
Last year, an independent review board recommended that NASA revisit the mission design given the concerns about the technical features and the high costs.
NASA’s decision to scrap its $11 billion, 15-year mission to Mars to bring back samples could create a startup feeding frenzy, TechCrunch reports.
Describing its plans as too slow, and too expensive, NASA is going back to the drawing board, with an eye on getting the space industry to help.
But space startups are not worried about it.
So, the NASA money might have a bunch of startup-sized buckets to drip into, and I am here for it.
To that end, if any startup that works with NASA on the Mars rock mission needs a human to send up there to check on the dials and such, I’m your guy.
What is worth $11 billion and wants to go to Mars to collect rocks?
NASA’s mission to Mars to collect rocks that was expected to cost $11 billion and take ages.
So, the U.S. space agency is throwing the doors open to get more input, and that means that startups are looking at an opportunity that is truly out of this world.
To close, the massive, gobsmackingly big $7.2 billion worth of new funds from a16z.
For the full interview transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, read on, or check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has pronounced the agency’s $11 billion, 15-year mission to collect and return samples from Mars: insufficient.
But the strategy shift could be a huge boon to space startups, to which much of that planned funding will almost certainly be redirected.
(There’s plenty of time to save and repurpose the most important concepts and research already done by NASA and its partners.)
But the official announcement, and the implication that it is the new generation of space companies that will accomplish ambitious goals like a there-and-back trip to Mars, must be very validating.
Whatever that new plan may be, it will almost certainly rely far more than before on commercial services and hardware.
Ingenuity, the small helicopter that’s been buzzing around the Red Planet for almost three years, has taken its final flight.
NASA announced today that at least one of the helicopter’s carbon fiber rotor blades was damaged during its last mission, grounding it for good.
As NASA Administrator Bill Nelson explained in a statement today, Ingenuity was up against the very, very thin Martian atmosphere, which is less than 1% as dense as Earth’s.
It arrived on the Red Planet attached to the underside of the Perseverance rover, which is still active on Mars’ surface.
Just last week, NASA experienced a two-day communications blackout with the little helicopter after it conducted what turned out to be its final flight.
Ingenuity, the small helicopter that’s been buzzing around the Red Planet for almost three years, has taken its final flight.
NASA announced today that at least one of the helicopter’s carbon fiber rotor blades was damaged during its last mission, grounding it for good.
As NASA Administrator Bill Nelson explained in a statement today, Ingenuity was up against the very, very thin Martian atmosphere, which is less than 1% as dense as Earth’s.
It arrived on the Red Planet attached to the underside of the Perseverance rover, which is still active on Mars’ surface.
Just last week, NASA experienced a two-day communications blackout with the little helicopter after it conducted what turned out to be its final flight.
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