SPACE ART: Mars Sample Return Mission

This artist’s rendering illustrates a Mars Sample Return mission that was under study at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in the 1990’s.

The spacecraft would have been launched into Earth-orbit by a space shuttle, released from the shuttle’s cargo bay and propelled toward Mars by an upper-stage engine. A lander (left background) would separate from an orbiting vehicle (upper right) and descend to the planet’s surface.

The lander’s payload would include a robotic rover (foreground), which would spend a year moving about the Martian terrain collecting scientifically significant rock and soil samples. The rover would then return to the lander and transfer its samples to a small rocket that would carry them into orbit and rendezvous with the orbiter for a return to Earth. As depicted above the rover consists of three two-wheeled cabs, and is fitted with a stereo camera vision system and tool-equipped arms for sample collection.