A Mars Sample Handoff in Passing

Transcript

Planetary JAG was a proposed Mars flyby mission, not a sample-return operation that ever flew. In the nineteen sixties, planners imagined an automated lander collecting Martian material while a crewed spacecraft swept past the planet. About two hours before the spacecraft’s closest approach, the lander would touch down, gather roughly two pounds of samples, and launch the package back towards the passing crew. After closest approach, the crew would use a boom-mounted capture ring to secure the package, then bring it into the spacecraft’s biology laboratory for examination. In plain terms, a robot on Mars would send its samples up to astronauts moving past the planet, rather than requiring the astronauts to land. The plan remained on paper as funding for Voyager and advanced piloted-mission planning was cut. The key takeaway is that a crewed flyby could be paired with a surface sample return without making the crewed spacecraft land.