NASA’s Mars Lander Will Launch A Rocket & It’s Being Tested Right Now

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has started to test the legs and footpads of the largest lander to be sent to Mars in history. The space agency has been busy collecting Martian rocket samples through the Perseverance rover that landed on the red planet amidst much fanfare a few years back in 2021. However, returning these rock samples to Earth is a completely different task since Perseverance cannot fly out independently. To retrieve them, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) will fly a new lander to Mars equipped with a rocket to blast the samples off to space and allow teams on Earth to analyze them upon return.

NASA's Mars Sample Retrieval Lander Will Feature Multiple Rocket Engines And Weigh More Than Two Tons

While NASA is currently focusing its efforts on the Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon, this program is a part of the agency's broader efforts toward Mars exploration. The Artemis program will be the stepping stone to future Mars missions, as it will provide astronauts and the space agency with the necessary experience of living and working in space before the long-duration Mars missions can take place.

As part of these efforts, NASA will evaluate the rock samples gathered by the Perseverance rover on Earth since the lab machines can not easily be sent to the Martian surface. The Mars Sample Retrieval Lander will bring these samples to Earth, and engineers are already testing this lander's landing legs and footpads at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

These legs are crucial to the lander's design since they will allow it to absorb the impact of a landing and ensure that the vehicle is in working condition post-landing. The platform's stability is crucial to its operations, as it will also serve as a mobile rocket launch site once it is on Mars.

NASA tests a 16 inch in diameter Martian lander footpad at the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A rocket on a lander is a unique idea, but it is the only way NASA can recover the Martian soil samples. The lander will launch these into Mars' orbit, where an orbiter will already be in place to collect them and bring them to Earth. In NASA speak, the Mars rocket is called the Mars Ascent Vehicle. The orbiter will be operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) as part of the agency's Mars Sample Return Program.

Compared to the complex engines that power rockets such as NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) and SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets, the Mars rocket is a simple two-stage solid fuel rocket. Solid fuel is used by the SLS's rocket boosters and by ballistic and other missiles. With a speed of 2.5 miles per second, the MAV will reach Mars' orbit ten minutes after launch, weighing 169 kilograms on Mars. On Earth, the rocket weighs 450 kilograms.

The Mars lander will also feature rocket engines, 12 to be precise. These engines are crucial in cutting down the lander's speed during a landing, and they will work together with the footpads and the landing legs being tested at JPL. It weighs 2,275 kilograms on Earth, presumably with the rocket inside it. This makes it the heaviest vehicle ever to land on the Martian surface. The lander must land within 60 meters of the target site due to the requirements of effectively retrieving the rock samples.

Among the things being studied by the team at JPL are wobbles in the legs that might be troublesome during the actual landing. It is currently planned to launch in 2028, with the sample retrieval in the early 2030s.

Written by Ramish Zafar