Concerns grow over Mars Sample Return mission

Editor’s note: This article is adapted from a 2 May post on FYI, which reports on federal science policy. Both FYI and Physics Today are published by the American Institute of Physics.

Costs are rising for Mars Sample Return.

The planned mission has great scientific promise: The Martian rock and soil to be collected should provide unprecedented insight into the Red Planet’s geological history and could even reveal evidence of past life. But the price is steep. NASA is poised to spend well over $5 billion on MSR, and the mission is starting to pull funding from other efforts.

Some members of the science community have been asking probing questions about MSR, despite NASA leaders’ calls for unity. And now, the criticisms are making their way to Congress.

Climbing costs and funding

A joint effort of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), Mars Sample Return is a multivehicle mission to retrieve rock and soil that the Perseverance rover has been collecting in a former Martian lake bed. Back on Earth, researchers would be able to analyze Martian rock up close for the first time.

MSR’s emergence as a behemoth in NASA’s science mission portfolio has been sudden. As recently as 2020, it did not have a dedicated budget line. That year an independent review board concluded the agency was underestimating the mission’s requirements. It rejected the roughly $3 billion cost estimate NASA was tentatively using and recommended assuming about $4.4 billion for mission development, which excludes launch and operations. The board also called for a swift ramp-up in funding to avoid costs related to deferred work and to assure the feasibility of MSR’s launch schedule.

Subsequently, NASA and Congress raised the mission’s annual budget from an initial $242 million in fiscal year 2021 to $822 million this year, cumulatively providing $1.7 billion to date. The unusually aggressive push received important backing last year, when the National Academies’ latest planetary science decadal survey ranked it the highest-priority project for NASA this decade and urged its completion “as rapidly as possible.”

Estimating that MSR would have a full life-cycle cost of $5.3 billion, the survey warned that the mission could unbalance NASA’s planetary science portfolio. It recommended that MSR claim no more than 35% of the portfolio budget in any given year and that its total cost not exceed the survey’s estimate by more than about 20%. Should either threshold be breached, the survey recommended NASA “work with the administration and Congress to secure a budget augmentation to ensure the success of this strategic mission.”

Cracks showing in support

In the past, NASA officials have denied that cost growth on the agency’s most expensive missions threatens other activities. They have said they contain overruns by downscaling the missions’ capabilities, delaying their launches, and deferring work on later large-scale missions.

Applying that policy may not be straightforward with MSR. The 2020 review observed that MSR’s mission architecture is tightly focused on sample return with little room for trimming capabilities. In addition, it deemed 2028 to be MSR’s last “viable” launch date because the next opportunity, in 2030, presents unfavorable conditions for Mars arrival.

Last year NASA cited MSR’s funding needs in delaying its Near-Earth Object Surveyor telescope by two years and withdrawing from an international group planning a Mars orbiter mission. This year the agency shifted the burden beyond its planetary science portfolio, holding off on planning for future flagship astrophysics telescopes and proposing to “pause” the Geospace Dynamics Constellation, a high-priority heliophysics mission.

NASA Science Mission Directorate head Nicky Fox acknowledged at an online “town hall” meeting in March that such decisions can be difficult but urged the audience to remain focused on the common good. “Remember that we are stronger when we work together as a community,” she said.

At another town hall in April, multiple audience questions concerned MSR’s costs and the trade-offs the agency is making within its science portfolio. Fox vehemently rejected the premise of one question that referred to a “hypercompetition” among NASA’s science divisions, saying, “There really is not any competition, never mind hypercompetition, … between the divisions. It’s extremely collaborative.”

Notwithstanding NASA’s point of view, MSR’s demands, along with the postponement of the VERITAS Venus probe due partly to understaffing , have stoked a sense that it is unfair to divert funding from apparently on-track missions to fund missions facing problems.

Some lawmakers are starting to voice discontent as well. At a NASA budget hearing on 18 April, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) asserted that, to fund MSR, NASA had cut 20% from what it should have requested for Dragonfly, a mission to Saturn’s moon Titan that is being developed at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in his state. He further suggested that Dragonfly has a stronger management record than MSR, an argument Representative Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD) echoed at a House hearing the next day as he questioned whether MSR should have priority.

House Science Committee chair Frank Lucas (R-OK) likewise flagged MSR’s cost growth at a hearing on 27 April, linking it to the delays of NEO Surveyor, the Geospace Dynamics Constellation, and VERITAS. “If this trend continues, then NASA may have to make difficult decisions to postpone or cancel future missions,” he said. “This is unacceptable, and we must do better.”

Evolving cost estimates

It is clear that early cost estimates for MSR will prove too optimistic, though by how much remains uncertain. NASA’s latest budget request presents a notional budget profile that supposes $5.2 billion in expenditures through MSR’s target launch date in 2028, and mission operations will continue through at least 2033. Moreover, the request notes the figures given for future years will likely rise.

MSR program director Jeff Gramling addressed swelling costs at the March town hall, pointing to unexpected difficulties with procuring components that must be contracted for well in advance. “We’re seeing growth in long lead times, which means we’re having to execute contracts earlier,” he said. “We’re seeing differences coming back in cost beyond what we’ve experienced in the past or beyond what our in-house estimates suggest they should cost. And our supplier base is contracted. And of course on top of that, there’s also inflation.”

Such pressures may be squeezing MSR’s near-term budgets as well as driving up its overall cost. NASA planetary science division director Lori Glaze said at a National Academies meeting in March that she is most focused on not breaching the decadal survey’s 35% threshold, noting that she discusses it with Gramling “almost every day.”

For the moment, MSR is within that limit. NASA is seeking $950 million for the mission in FY 2024, which is 28% of the requested planetary science budget. But NASA administrator Bill Nelson said at the Senate budget hearing that he was told on a recent visit to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is developing MSR, that the mission needs more money. “They’re saying they want another $250 million in this year—meaning in this year, the existing 2023—and 2024,” Nelson said.

Contacted by FYI, a NASA spokesperson refrained from clarifying whether Nelson meant JPL wanted $250 million above the request for FY 2024, which begins 1 October, or a total of $500 million across FY 2023 and 2024. The spokesperson said the cited amount was not “official” but rather “illustrative of supply-chain challenges with this and other NASA major projects,” and that the agency’s 2024 request remains unchanged.

Pressed by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the Senate’s lead appropriator for NASA, on how MSR’s costs can be controlled, Nelson replied, “Some of those costs are not going to be avoided, and we’re going to have to make choices.” Unless Congress allocates more funding on its own accord, he said, the options include stretching the mission’s schedule and reallocating money from other science missions.

NASA awaits a new review

Another complication with MSR is that last year NASA made major changes to the mission architecture, so that it now differs markedly from what the 2020 review and the decadal survey considered. The new plan disposes of a “fetch” rover that ESA was to provide. Instead, Perseverance will deliver 30 sample tubes to MSR’s ascent vehicle itself. In case Perseverance cannot do so, the mission will carry two helicopters to retrieve 10 backup tubes Perseverance has already left at a “depot,” though NASA has indicated it might eliminate one helicopter to control costs.

To update the three-year-old review, NASA is setting up a new independent board chaired by Orlando Figueroa, who led the agency’s work on the successful Spirit and Opportunity rovers in the wake of two failed Mars missions. Due in August, the board’s report will assess the feasibility of NASA’s plans for the mission and the risks and cost of the new architecture, potentially including whether the redesign will permit or require a delay past 2028.

NASA aims to commit to a baseline design, cost, and schedule for MSR late this year.