NASA has awarded the Mars Ascent Propulsion System (MAPS) contract to Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation of Elkton, Maryland, to provide propulsion and products for spaceflight missions at the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Coupled with the successful landing of the Mars Perseverance rover, this award brings NASA and the ESA (European Space Agency) one step closer to realizing the Mars Sample Return (MSR), a highly ambitious planetary exploration program that will build on decades of science, knowledge, and experience from Mars exploration.
The fixed-fee cost-plus contract has a potential mission services value of $60,2 million and a maximum potential value of $84,5 million. Work on MAPS begins immediately with a 14-month base period, followed by two option periods that may be exercised at NASA's discretion.
In the next stages of the MSR campaign, NASA and ESA will provide components for a Sample Retrieval Lander mission and an Earth Return Orbiter mission. The Sample Retrieval Lander mission will deliver a Sample Fetch Rover and Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) to the surface of Mars.
Marshall is responsible for the MAV element of the MSR Program, which is a two-stage vehicle that will be a critical element in ing the MSR to retrieve and return the samples that the Perseverance Mars 2020 rover will collect to return to Earth.
The Martian environment will be a significant factor in the design, development, manufacture, testing and qualification of two different solid rocket engines with multiple deliveries of each. Under the MAPS contract, Northrop Grumman will supply the propulsion systems for the MAV.
Bringing Mars samples back to Earth will allow scientists around the world to examine the specimens using sophisticated instruments too large and complex to send to Mars, and will allow future generations to study them using technology not yet available.
Curating the samples on Earth will allow the scientific community to test new theories and models as they are developed, just as the Apollo samples that returned from the Moon have done for decades.
Source: NASA
