A mission that uses SpaceX's Dragon capsule to help bring chunks of Mars rock back to Earth for analysis could launch as early as 2022, researchers say, according to Space.com.
This "Red Dragon" project — which remains a concept at the moment, not an approved mission — would grab samples collected by NASA's 2020 Mars rover and send them rocketing back toward Earth, where researchers could scrutinize the material for possible signs of past Red Planet life.
The sample-return effort would keep costs and complexity down by using SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket and a modified version of the company's robotic Dragon cargo capsule, the concept's developers say.
Red Dragon is "technically feasible with the use of these emerging commercial technologies, coupled with technologies that already exist," Andy Gonzales, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, said Wednesday (Sept. 9) during a presentation with the space agency's Future In-Space Operations (FISO) working group.
The Red Dragon team has developed the concept independently, without any involvement or endorsement by SpaceX, Gonzales said.
NASA aims to grab and cache samples from a potentially habitable environment with its next Mars rover, which is scheduled to blast off in 2020. But the space agency does not yet have a firm plan or timeline for bringing this material back to Earth.
