You are not logged in.
some wonder if this is practice for Mars
That new Chinese Lunar Mission
China’s Robotic Moon Lander: Ready for Farside Sampling
https://www.leonarddavid.com/chinas-rob … -sampling/
Samples collected by these missions from the central cryptomaria would be critical ground truth for assessing the early thermal history of the lunar farside, and their comparison with Apollo/Luna/Chang’E samples collected from the lunar nearside would also help to unravel the causes of the hemispherical asymmetry of mare deposits.
Robert Zubrin proposes another low cost approach to Mars Sample Return:
A practical approach to the Mars Sample Return mission
Robert Zubrin
May 6, 2024
https://spacenews.com/practical-approac … n-mission/This looks also like it could be something done for less than $100 million by commercial space, 1/100th the cost estimated by NASA doing it.
Bob Clark
to quote
Option 1: Use NTO/MMH from Earth
Total landed mass 1,000 kg
Sample size 5 kgOption 2: Use CH4/O2 from Mars
Total landed mass 1,000 kg
Sample size 25 kg...477 kilograms of the payload delivered to Mars is the propellant needed to come home. This suggests that great mass savings — or increased return payload capacity — could be achieved by making use of technology to produce high-performance methane/oxygen propellant out of local materials on Mars
...
While using locally produced methane/oxygen does add complexity to the mission, it quintuples the amount of sample that can be returned. It would also demonstrate a key technology for enabling human Mars missions to follow.
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2024-05-18 17:11:27)
Offline