Air turbulence: When can it become dangerous?
Flight turbulence like that encountered by a Singapore Airlines flight on Tuesday is extremely common, but there's one aspect of severe turbulence an aviation expert says can lead to serious injury.
NASA is seeking innovative methods that could help retrieve samples collected by the Perseverance rover on Mars in the future.
The rover, which landed on Mars in February 2021, has been gathering specimens from Jezero Crater, where an ancient lake and river delta once existed on the red planet. Scientists believe the samples could help them better understand whether life ever existed on Mars.
The original design for the Mars Sample Return program, a partnership between NASA and the European Space Agency, was a complex one. The architecture involved multiple missions launching from Earth to Mars to collect the samples, and then conducting the first rocket launch from the surface of another planet to return the samples to Earth.
But there have been concerns about the program being too unwieldy due to complexity, expense and a delayed return date, which was originally expected to happen by 2031, but has been pushed after assessments by an independent review board. Budget cuts that have impacted NASA have also put the program at risk.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, shared the federal agency’s response to the independent review board on Monday.
Reviews of the program have recommended that the Mars Sample return should not cost more than US$5 billion to US$7 billion, Nelson said. But NASA is being forced to deal with the constraints of reduced spending due to budget cuts for the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years, causing the agency to take a US$2.5 billion hit, he said.
“Mars Sample Return will be one of the most complex missions NASA has ever undertaken. The bottom line is, an US$11 billion budget is too expensive, and a 2040 return date is too far away,” Nelson said. “Safely landing and collecting the samples, launching a rocket with the samples off another planet — which has never been done before — and safely transporting the samples more than 33 million miles (53 million kilometers) back to Earth is no small task. We need to look outside the box to find a way ahead that is both affordable and returns samples in a reasonable time frame.”
Nelson said it’s unacceptable to wait until 2040 to return the samples to Earth because the 2040s is “the decade that we’re going to be landing astronauts on Mars,” he reiterated during a Monday press conference.
An US$11 billion price tag for the program would cause NASA to cannibalize other science programs and missions, Nelson said.
Those missions include the NEO, or Near-Earth Object, Surveyor to discover asteroids that may pose a risk to Earth; Dragonfly, which will investigate the potential habitability of Saturn’s moon Titan; and missions such as DAVINCI and VERITAS to uncover the secrets of Venus. (The Venus mission names are short for Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry and Imaging Plus and Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy.)
While Nelson is hopeful that the budget for fiscal year 2026 won’t be as constrained, opening up more science funding for NASA, it doesn’t solve the immediate problem of how to address moving forward with Mars Sample Return.
So, the space agency is opening up a call for help.
Agency officials will soon announce solicitations to NASA centers and industry to develop a new plan that combines innovation with lessons learned from proven technology, according to Fox. NASA is targeting the 2030s for a sample-return mission with less complexity, cost and risk, he said.
It’s a quick turnaround for proposals, and the agency is expecting to have answers for how best to return samples from Mars by the fall, Nelson said.
The baseline requirement of the proposals is to return the 30 scientifically curated samples Perseverance has taken from a diverse set of locations, Fox said.
“Mars is extremely important to us,” Fox said. “It’s one of the only locations that could have had life. Having said that, we understand that in order to do things faster, we may have to lower the scope of the number of samples.”
The solicitation for a new architecture for Mars Sample Return will include a range of desired specimens to return to Earth, Fox said.
“We are operating from the premise that this is an important national objective that we return the samples,” Nelson said.
He reinforced the idea that NASA did not want to terminate the program because it was deemed too critical, especially as the agency looks to land astronauts on the red planet going forward.
Meanwhile, the current decisions won’t affect the scientific plan for Perseverance’s journey on Mars, and the rover continues to collect samples as it explores the crater rim, Fox said.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California, manages the Perseverance rover mission and other exploration endeavors on Mars.
Current efforts for the return program were underway at JPL when layoffs hit the location in February to meet the requirements of budget cuts. The new architecture that’s ultimately developed for the sample return mission will determine the scope of JPL’s management oversight, Nelson said.
The European Space Agency has also played a big role in developing the program, and Fox confirmed that the agency is still involved in discussions about the future of the program.
For fiscal year 2025, Fox said she is recommending a budget request of US$200 million while NASA assesses alternative architectures, which will also enable other planetary science to continue at JPL and other NASA centers.
“To organize a mission at this level of complexity, we employ decades of lessons on how to run a large mission, including incorporating the input we get from conducting independent reviews,” Fox said. “Our next steps will position us to bring this transformational mission forward and deliver revolutionary science from Mars — providing critical new insights into the origins and evolution of Mars, our solar system, and life on Earth.”
Flight turbulence like that encountered by a Singapore Airlines flight on Tuesday is extremely common, but there's one aspect of severe turbulence an aviation expert says can lead to serious injury.
British Columbia serial killer Robert Pickton was attacked and sustained life-threatening injuries in a Quebec prison Sunday in what officials described as a 'major assault.'
In his latest column for CTVNews.ca, former NDP leader Tom Mulcair argues that if there's an unofficial frontrunner in the eventual race to replace Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader, it has to be former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney.
The Toronto Blue Jays have offered tickets and a signed baseball to a fan who says she was struck in the face by a 110 m.p.h (177 km/h) foul ball at Friday’s game.
Members of a killer whale pod related to an orphan orca calf that escaped a remote British Columbia tidal lagoon last month have been spotted off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island.
Ontario Provincial Police continue to investigate a long weekend fatal boat collision on Bobs Lake, north of Kingston, Ont.
An investigation has been opened into the death of Matthew Perry and how the “Friends” actor received the anesthetic ketamine, which was ruled a contributing factor in his death.
House of Commons Speaker Greg Fergus is facing fresh Conservative-led calls to resign, this time over "very partisan" and 'inflammatory' language used – the Liberals say mistakenly – to promote an upcoming event.
As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues the 'Team Canada' charm offensive to U.S. lawmakers and business leaders, Canada's ambassador to the United States downplayed the effect of another Trump presidency on Canada.
Montreal photographer captured the moment a Canada Goose defended itself from a fox at the Botanical Garden.
Public libraries in Atlantic Canada are now lending a broader range of items.
Flashes of purple darting across the sky mixed with the serenading sound of songs will be noticed more with spring in full force in Manitoba.
Catching 'em all with impressive speed, a 7-year-old boy from Windsor, Ont. who only started his competitive Pokémon journey seven months ago has already levelled up to compete at a world championship level.
A sanctuary dedicated to animals with disabilities is celebrating the third birthday of one of its most popular residents.
2b Theatre recently moved into the old Video Difference building, seeking to transform it into an artistic hub, meeting space, and temporary housing unit for visiting performers in Halifax.
A B.C. woman says her service dog pulled her from a lake moments before she had a seizure, saving her life.
A Starbucks fan — whose name is Winter — is visiting Canada on a purposeful journey that began with a random idea at one of the coffee chain's stores in Texas.
Members of Piapot First Nation, students from the University of Winnipeg and various other professionals are learning new techniques that will hopefully be used for ground searches of potential unmarked grave sites in the future.