Questions tagged [sample-return]
Mission to some extraterrestrial object which results in return of materials to Earth for further examination.
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Does Chang'e 6 try to avoid sampling contaminated soil?
Watching this amazing video of Chang'e 6 taking samples from the Apollo Crater on the far side of the Moon, I was struck by the proximity of the sample channels to the lander. It's understandable ...
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Would a ice core samples taken on the Moon provide us with information about the past that we cannot easily obtain in other ways?
This article on NASA's website describes 10 things we’ve learned about Earth by studying the Moon, including the makeup of a newborn Earth and potential clues to how life began on Earth. The ...
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Why not bring an extra rover with an ExoMars drill unit to Jezero to have a far better chance to get biosignatures for the sample return mission?
In an interview in the recent article Mars Has So Much Radiation, Any Signs of Life Would Be Buried Six Feet Under physicist Alexander Pavlov of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center tells that he and ...
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Would planetary quarantine have to be used for asteroid mining missions?
Currently, sample return missions have to follow very delicate procedures to move the sample to the return vehicle. This is incredibly complicated and may explain why so few missions have launched.
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Is Perseverance going to keep carrying those samples around or cache them? I don't really understand the plan
IFLScience's Perseverance's Latest Mars Rock Sample Contains Curious "Greenish" Mineral begins:
Having long broken its record of firsts on Mars, the Perseverance rover, still pootling ...
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Why did Luna 16 go to the Moon at night? (Extreme cold vs robotic sampling & launch back to Earth)
While landing on the Sun at night has obvious advantages1 I'm curious why Luna 16 landed on the Moon at night. It was a complex mission involving robotic sample retrieval and a sample return launch ...
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Are there plans to return empty sample containers as an experimental control?
The Perseverance rover contains 43 sample tubes for collecting Martian soil and rock samples that will eventually be returned to Earth. The tubes have been extensively cleaned, so their contents ...
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Are the Perseverance core samples extracted from the drill bit before being stored?
Among other tasks, the Perseverance rover will drill core samples of rocks, which are then stored in sample tubes for their return to Earth.
Are the core samples removed from the drill bit before ...
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Lunar sample return cost per kg - Apollo vs Luna vs Chang'e
Lunar samples (rocks, soil etc.) were returned by US Apollo program, Russian Luna and Chinese Chang'e. How does the cost per kg of the samples compare among these missions? Who got it the cheapest per ...
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Why does the Perseverance Rover do sample caching?
As glad as I am that Perseverance's landing was successful, I'm a bit confused as to why there appears to be so little science equipment aboard the rover (by volume) and why the mission seems to be ...
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Perseverance individual sample collection post-mission; what stops them from blowing away or getting covered and hidden by dust?
I have been seeing videos that the plan after Perseverance is done collecting samples to distribute them in 'strategic' locations around Mars for another rover to drive around and pick up later. Why ...
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Minimum delta V required to return a piece of metallic asteroid 16 Psyche to Earth?
Suppose somebody sent a rover to Psyche 16 and found massive concentrated deposits of platinum-group metals near the surface, and turned it into a 10 ton sphere of platinum/iridium/osmium/gold alloy ...
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What skipped test on Genesis would have detected the backwards-inserted accelerometer which didn't deploy the parachute?
What precautions are planned to prevent samples returned from Mars crashing and releasing organisms on Earth? and this answer to Why would bringing samples from Mars back to Earth be a “civilization-...
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Actual mass of Chang'e 5 samples
What is the actual mass of the sample retrieved by Chang'e 5?
Wikipedia says:
with an expected return to Earth around 16 December 2020. Chang'e 5 will be China's first sample return mission, aiming ...
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Actual mass of Hayabusa 2 samples in 2020?
Similar to Actual mass of Hayabusa samples in 2010?, but about the recent mission.
What is the actual mass of the samples retrieved by Hayabusa 2?
The most detailed information I was able to find is:
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Have lasers ever been used to track laser-reflective parachute cloth for spaceflight missions? And what is it by the way?
In the JAXA PDF Hayabusa2 Information Fact Sheet (Ver. 2. 3, 2018. 07. 05, found here) on slide/page number 53 there is a diagram labeled Re-entry sequence overview and in the top right corner is ...
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From interplanetary space to the Australian Outback, how will Hayabusa2's return capsule be tracked? Desert Fireball Network perhaps?
Wired.com's For the Second Time Ever, an Asteroid Sample Returns to Earth says that "the sample return capsule from Hayabusa2" will land "under parachute in the Australian outback" ...
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What will happen to Chang’e 5 orbiter?
What will happen to the Chang’e 5 orbiter which will return the collected samples to earth? Will it burn up in the atmosphere like Hayabusa, or is an extented mission planned?
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How large an asteroid sample does hayabusa2 have?
As the title says, is it known how big, or massive, hayabusa2's sample is, due for Earth touchdown on 6th December?
I have tried some basic internet research but found nothing on the anticipated ...
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Could the uncertain mass of the OSIRIS-REx sample affect the trajectory of the return capsule?
It appears that so much material was collected by OSIRIS-REx from the asteroid Bennu, that the cover of the collection head won't close, and some of the sample is floating away.
In reviewing these ...
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Thrown-together $200 million mission to asteroid 2020 SO; check out or nudge to longer-lasting mini-moon orbit
This tweet says in part:
Earth's potential new minimoon, 2020 SO may be the Surveyor 2 Centaur rocket body, launched in September 1966. Integrating backwards shows 2020 SO2 to also be orbiting Earth ...
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Is lunar sample return comercially viable for a private company?
Moon samples like rocks and dust are highly valuable and sought after and impossible to get legally as a private individual, because of the fact that USA owns all of the samples in existence, from the ...
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Why use a Mars orbital Earth return vehicle for sample return?
NASA's plan is to use two separate missions to bring home the drill core samples that the Perseverance rover will take. The samples will in plan be picked up by a landed mission and launched to Mars ...
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Could the SS520 be used to return a payload from Mars to Earth?
The Japanese SS520-5 nanosat launcher has a payload of 5kg or so to LEO on an all solid fuel rocket with a total mass of about 2.6 tons. To reach LEO its delta-V totalled over all three stages must be ...
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Has a suborbital rendezvous ever been mentioned in a serious mission proposal/study? [duplicate]
This is an odd one that's been in the back of my head for a while. Consider the LOR architecture of the Apollo missions. To return to earth from the lunar surface, it is most mass-efficient to have ...
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Obtaining Europa's samples from Callisto. Possible to identify them? Worthwhile?
A lot has been discussed about the possibility of panspermia between Earth and Mars, and how compact systems such as Trappist-1 can be more prone to that.
Here on Earth, we have identified numerous ...
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If Elon Musk wanted to bring back some Martian soil, would US permission be required?
A scenario occurred to me recently where the Chinese space program decided to go all-in on Mars sample return, and their schedule was such that it would happen before the NASA/ESA mission was ...
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Mars Sample Return Earth Return Orbiter -- which propulsion system for what?
Many sources (eg this one) show the Mars Sample Return Earth Return Orbiter with both ion and chemical propulsion, and also state that it will be launched on an Ariane 6, but I can't find a clear ...
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Will surface samples from Mars orbit the planet in a spherical capsule until captured?
The abstract of the interesting 2001 NASA JPL paper Covering a Sphere with Retroreflectors says:
Abstract- One of the future missions for Mars involves returning a soil sample from the Martian ...
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Mars 2020: What are the advantages of doing two missions to return samples?
The Mars 2020 plans to create a cache with samples for a future mission to grab and bring back. What are the advantages of doing one mission to create the cache and one mission to bring the cache back ...
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