NASA invests $10 million in Mars sample return proposals from Blue Origin, SpaceX, and other companies

NASA has awarded $1.5 million contracts to seven companies for their innovative proposals to improve the agency’s Mars Sample Return mission. The space industry has come up with various ideas to enhance NASA’s $11 billion, 15-year plan to collect and return samples from Mars, and seven of these proposals have caught the agency’s attention.

The awardees and the titles of their proposals are as follows: Lockheed Martin with “Lockheed Martin Rapid Mission Design Studies for Mars Sample Return,” SpaceX with “Enabling Mars Sample Return With Starship,” Aerojet Rocketdyne with “A High-Performance Liquid Mars Ascent Vehicle,” Blue Origin with “Leveraging Artemis for Mars Sample Return,” Quantum Space with “Quantum Anchor Leg Mars Sample Return Study,” Northrop Grumman with “High TRL MAV Propulsion Trades and Concept Design,” and Whittinghill Aerospace with “A Rapid Design Study for the MSR Single Stage Mars Ascent Vehicle.”

These companies, along with two NASA centers, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Applied Physics Laboratory, were selected to produce studies after NASA put out a request for proposals in April. The goal of these studies is to explore viable alternative mission designs or elements that could safely bring Martian samples back to Earth.

NASA decided to turn to private industry after realizing the complexity and high costs associated with its current Mars Sample Return architecture. The agency is seeking a less complex mission design that will reduce costs and allow for an earlier return date. Companies will begin their work in July and are expected to complete their studies by October.