Lockheed Martin Wins Contract to Return Rocks from Mars

NASA has picked space and defense contractor Lockheed Martin to build a small rocket capable of lifting off from the surface of Mars carrying samples of the Red Planet’s rocks and other materials. The decision is a big step in a long journey to eventually bring pristine pieces of Mars back to Earth so that scientists can study them in greater detail. If successful, Lockheed Martin’s rocket could become the first to launch from another planet. The rocket that Lockheed Martin is charged with building is known as the “Mars Ascent Vehicle,” or the MAV. It’s a key part of NASA’s plan to retrieve samples of Martian dirt that are currently being gathered by the space agency’s Mars rover, Perseverance. Last year, NASA successfully landed Perseverance on Mars with the explicit goal of gathering samples of the Martian environment while looking for signs of life. Perseverance has gathered a handful of samples so far and will eventually leave them on the surface of Mars to be picked up later.

For decades, scientists have been dreaming about returning samples from Mars to learn more about what’s going on in the Martian dirt, including if the planet ever hosted alien life. Studying the Martian environment with robots from afar can only tell us so much — we need to study samples of Mars here on Earth with sophisticated laboratory instruments. But Mars sample return is an incredibly complex kind of mission. It entails landing a rocket on the Red Planet that can take off again — something that’s never been done before. NASA says it is giving Lockheed Martin a cost-plus contract to make the MAV, potentially worth up to $194 million. The contract will span six years, beginning no later than February 25th, NASA says. Under its agreement with NASA, Lockheed Martin will develop multiple test units of the MAV as well as the final flight unit. Creating the MAV is going to be a big engineering challenge since it has to be small enough to fit on a lander but hardy enough to withstand the harsh Mars environment.

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