Does anyone have any clue how much they plan on bringing back? Are we talking 8oz, 1lb, 5lbs, 25lbs of sample? Whole rocks? Scoops of dirt?
the_fungible_man on
That headline doesn’t pass a sanity check.
*”bring Mars samples to Earth by around 2028″*
either that or the word “around” is doing a lot of very heavy lifting.
First you got to get there, presumably with a mobile platform capable of sampling multiple sites. Unless it’s ready to fly **now**, the soonest it could launch is Q4 2026, arriving on Mars in mid 2027.
It would then have about 1 Earth year to zip around collecting samples before an Earth return window opens in late 2028 – bringing the samples to Earth by mid 2029 (which **is** around 2028).
The window after that would get the samples on Earth toward the end of 2031 – not really around 2028.
edit: according to info **not** in the article, the launches are planned for 2028, not the sample return. The return would occur in 2031.
Vanduul666 on
And this is how we stole the favorite rock of Godzilla in 2028.
4 Comments
is this a good idea?
have they seen the movies?
Does anyone have any clue how much they plan on bringing back? Are we talking 8oz, 1lb, 5lbs, 25lbs of sample? Whole rocks? Scoops of dirt?
That headline doesn’t pass a sanity check.
*”bring Mars samples to Earth by around 2028″*
either that or the word “around” is doing a lot of very heavy lifting.
First you got to get there, presumably with a mobile platform capable of sampling multiple sites. Unless it’s ready to fly **now**, the soonest it could launch is Q4 2026, arriving on Mars in mid 2027.
It would then have about 1 Earth year to zip around collecting samples before an Earth return window opens in late 2028 – bringing the samples to Earth by mid 2029 (which **is** around 2028).
The window after that would get the samples on Earth toward the end of 2031 – not really around 2028.
edit: according to info **not** in the article, the launches are planned for 2028, not the sample return. The return would occur in 2031.
And this is how we stole the favorite rock of Godzilla in 2028.