msr

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.