Text | Hearing the sound of the green tree
Edit | Hearing the sound of the green tree
Sources: All of the information stated in this article is based on reliable sources, and is detailed at the end of the article
Preface
In the exploration of the universe, the United States can be said to have always been "far ahead," the first to land on the moon and the first to launch a probe to Mars, and the United States has a very obvious advantage.
But the funny thing is that the U.S. Mars sample return program, which was originally expected to return to Earth in 2030, has now been postponed for a full 10 years and will not return to Earth until 2040.
This push and push, 9 years later than China, what happened to the always strong American NASA?
It was originally planned
In the exploration of space, the United States started early, China started late, and the United States had already landed on the moon before China realized manned spaceflight.
The United States was also the first country to successfully launch a probe to Mars, and Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012 with the aim of walking on Mars, and has been working for 12 years so far.
In 2020, the United States launched the "Perseverance" again, this time to collect Martian samples, and after landing on Mars, Perseverance carried out the collection work in the crater.
So far, Perseverance has harvested a lot, having collected 21 cores, 2 regolith samples and 1 atmospheric sample, and not only that, Perseverance has also sent back many videos and photos of Mars, which are of great help to the study of Mars.
But at present, for the United States, the most important thing is to let the samples collected by Perseverance return to Earth as soon as possible.
In order to welcome the Martian samples, the plans of NASA in the United States are as follows:
First, in 2027, ESA will launch a Mars orbital sample returner, which will operate in Mars orbit for about 4 years, waiting for the return of the probe and docking to transfer samples.
Second, in 2028, NASA will launch a sample collection + sample ascent probe, and after arriving on Mars, it will first collect samples from Perseverance, place them in the ascender, and then launch and dock with the sample returner in orbit.
Third: In 2030, ESA's Mars orbital sample returner will enter Earth-fire orbit and will reach Earth in 2031.
There is no problem with this plan itself, it is also in line with the current logic of space exploration, and it is supported by a wealth of theories, and there is still a great hope that it will succeed.
However, because the United States went wrong in the second step, this plan was forced to be postponed.
What went wrong with NASA and what does the extension mean for the United States?
Program extension
In the plan, NASA needs to launch a "sample collection + sample ascent probe", sample collection refers to a Mars rover, and sample ascent refers to a rocket and launch pad.
In addition, in order to prevent the failure of the plan, the United States has added an additional Mars rover and two Mars helicopters, with their backing, the United States has a "plan B" to save the failure.
That is to say, the United States needs to send the above multiple spacecraft to Mars in one launch mission, although it is theoretically feasible and even perfect, but in actual scientific research, NASA has found an inevitable problem.
That is "overweight", because there are too many things to carry in the rocket, and so many things add up to far exceed the upper limit of the carrying capacity of the launch vehicle.
There are two options at hand, either invest in the development of rockets with a larger carrying capacity, or split them in two and send the probes to Mars in batches.
After careful consideration, NASA chose the latter, which is more cost-effective, that is, two launches.
The change in the plan directly led to the postponement of the return date of the Mars samples, because Mars is close to the Earth once in 2 years, and once it is postponed, it will start at least 2 years.
dragged back and forth, pushing the sample return plan to 2040, a result that was unacceptable to the NASA administrator.
In his opinion, the United States was the first to launch a Mars rover, and it should be the first country to get Mars samples, but if it is postponed to 2040, the United States will lag behind China by 9 years.
After the successful launch of the Mars exploration satellite in 2016, the mainland accelerated its progress, and launched the "Tianwen-1" Mars probe in 2020, and the Zhurong rover successfully landed on the Martian Utopia Plain.
According to the continental plan, the mainland will welcome Tianwen-1 back to Earth in 2031, which was originally behind the United States.
But now it's different, due to a major mistake by NASA, the mainland is likely to get Mars samples 9 years ahead of the United States.
The director of NASA was very angry about this, but what made him even more speechless was that because the plan had changed, the funding had also risen rapidly, directly soaring to $11 billion.
Why does NASA's R&D funding repeatedly exceed the standard?
American astronautics
This is not the first time that NASA has "skyrocketed funding," let alone the first time that the exploration process has been delayed.
On the "Return to the Moon", the United States determined the Artemis program, which was originally budgeted to cost $7.6 billion and was approved by the space agency's funding team.
However, due to rising costs and difficulties in research and development technology, the United States has had to repeatedly postpone its plan, sending astronauts to the moon as early as 2025, which has also been postponed to 2027, and the funding has skyrocketed to $93 billion.
The increase in funding more than ten times has become a stumbling block to the U.S. lunar landing program, and the Mars sample return plan was originally invested at $7 billion, but who would have thought that it would be expected to rise to $11 billion.
The director of NASA was extremely dissatisfied with this, and strongly demanded that the project team reorganize the plan, reduce costs, and optimize the plan.
The biggest reason for the sharp increase in NASA's funding is "outsourcing"; after the preliminary plan is completed, NASA outsources all the production and manufacturing processes to American arms dealers.
In the long-term cooperation with the US government, because they know their own irreplaceability, the asking price is getting higher and higher, and the US Congress has nothing to do about it.
Spending the most expensive money and doing the least things has become a common status quo in the aerospace and military fields of the United States, which is very unfavorable to the development of the United States, but the United States is also very helpless.
Resources:
Sputnik: NASA's Artemis lunar program will spend more than $93 billion by 2025
Tencent News: Insufficient funds for the U.S. "Constellation Program" to return to the moon are facing death
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