Inside Nasa’s plan to create tiny Mars rocket that will bring Martian samples to Earth
NASA has revealed plans to send a small rocket to Mars that will collect Martian samples and make sure they return to Earth.
The US space agency has selected defense contractor Lockheed Martin to make the small rocket.
Lockheed has just won the $194million (£143million) contract to design the spacecraft.
The rocket will play one role in a bigger mission to get pristine samples of Mars rock back to Earth.
If all goes to plan, Lockheed Martin's rocket will be the first to launch from a planet other than Earth.
It's called the “Mars Ascent Vehicle,” or the MAV.
MAV will pick up samples that Nasa's Perseverance rover is currently collecting.
Some scientists hope that the samples will provide signs of life or ancient life on the Red Planet.
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Studying Mars from a distance can only tell us so much and having a closer look at samples on Earth could be groundbreaking.
The mission will be tricky and will require safely landing the rocket on Mars, making sure all the samples are loaded onto it and then having it take off again.
Lockheed should start the project on February 25.
It will have about six years to come up with the rocket.
The rocket has to be small enough to fit inside a Mars lander but then strong enough to survive on its own once it's ejected from the lander and loaded with samples.
Nasa wants to call the lander the Sample Retrieval Lander and they'll likely need some other types of spacecraft for the complicated mission.
Nasa and the ESA also want to make another rover that could help Perseverance with sample collection.
The MAV rocket should fly the samples to another spacecraft the ESA is working on.
This larger craft should help bring the samples to Earth.
Nasa is hoping for the Sample Retrieval Lander to be on Mars by 2026 but the rest of the craft required for the mission may take longer.
The Mars samples aren't expected to be on Earth until the early 2030s.
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In other news, Nasa is keeping a close eye on a huge, "potentially hazardous" asteroid that's on its way to Earth's orbit.
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Nasa has upgraded its asteroid hazard software with some key changes that should help it better detect potentially dangerous space rocks.
And, the US space agency is planning for a 'golden asteroid' probing mission to launch this summer.
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