The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has named the aerospace company that will build the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) or the rocket that will play a crucial role in NASA's mission to retrieve samples from Mars.
According to NASA's report, the global security and aerospace company Lockheed Martin Space in Colorado will be the one to build the MAV.
NASA said a contract has already been "awarded to Lockheed Martin Space," which the space agency said includes "designing, developing, testing, and evaluating" the MAV rocket.
MAV's Mission On Mars
The MAV may be "small and lightweight" based on NASA's report, but its role in the complicated mission to obtain samples from Mars to bring here on Earth for advanced study is equally big and important.
According to NASA, the MAV will be the "first rocket to be fired off another planet."
To accomplish its mission, the MAV would be carried into the surface of Mars by NASA's Sample Retrieval Lander - a large and heavy spacecraft that is expected to launch in no earlier than 2026.
The goal for MAV is to land into (or near) the Jezero Crater. Once there, MAV will get the samples from Perseverance Rover, which has been collecting samples (rock, sediment, and atmospheric samples) since last year.
Further, NASA explained that the Sample Retrieval Lander would be the launch platform for the MAV. The MAV would launch once the samples were secured.
However, that is not where the tricky things end. MAV would then be captured by the Earth Return Orbiter spacecraft of the European Space Agency (ESA) once it reached Mar's orbit.
Then, the samples would finally be returned here on Earth in the 2030s.
As part of the contract, Lockheed Martin Space will also provide units for testing, apart from the flight unit.
As NASA puts it, this would be the first mission to return samples from another planet. This Mars Sample Return Program is considered a step closer to
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Mars Perseverance Rover
A successful development of MAV would be of great importance to Mars Perseverance Rover's missions to look for traces of ancient microbial life and collect samples.
These samples are key for advanced study. As said in a NASA post, the Perseverance Rover has a total of 43 tubes to fill in with samples from Mars.
In December 2021, Perseverance already had a total of five samples from Mars. It so was close to securing its sixth sample - it was able to put it in its tube, but a technical snag happened.
According to Scientific American, the technical issue that hindered the Perseverance Rover was caused by some pebbles that were "stuck in its throat."
The rover fixed the issue by removing the tube from the carousel.
The MAV rocket is hoped to be a way to unlock more knowledge about Mars. As a strategic partnership between NASA and ESA, the mission offers a great opportunity to know the past of Mars and its potential for life.
