NASA Awards CCRS Contract for Mars Sample Return Systems

NASA has awarded a contract to Honeybee Robotics of Longmont, Colorado, for Mars sample return systems. The total value of this cost-plus-fixed-fee contract is $17,686,341. The period of performance runs from Nov. 30, 2022, through July 30, 2026.

The contract covers the Mars Sample Return (MSR) – Capture, Containment, and Retrieval System (CCRS), Earth Entry System (EES), and Spin Eject Mechanism (SEM).

Honeybee Robotics LLC will provide the personnel, services, materials, equipment, and facilities necessary to build the CCRS, EES, and SEM Mars sample return systems, as well as for the successful and on-time implementation of the design, analysis, development, development test, fabrication, assembly, verification, engineering data analysis, calibration, qualification, acceptance, delivery, and post-delivery support of the SEM.

Sample Return CCRS Includes several Elements

The SEM is being procured as a component of the EES, which is part of the Mars Sample Return CCRS. The SEM restrains the EES during launch, cruise, and Capture & Containment Module operations and is an integral part of the primary load path for all of these mission stages. The SEM will also release the EES from the MSR Earth Return Orbiter spacecraft.

Work on the Mars sample return systems will be performed at the contractor's facility in Altadena, California, and at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Last month, NASA and ESA entered into a formal agreement to proceed with the creation of a sample tube depot on Mars. The sample depot, or cache, will be at “Three Forks,” an area located near the base of an ancient river delta in Jezero Crater.

This cache will contain samples from carefully selected rocks on the surface of Mars – samples that can help tell the story of Jezero Crater’s history and how Mars evolved, and could perhaps even contain signs of ancient life. Scientists believe the cored samples from the delta’s fine-grained sedimentary rocks – deposited in a lake billions of years ago – are the mostly likely to contain indicators of whether microbial life existed when Mars’ climate was much different than what it is today.

(Source: NASA news release. Images from file)