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Mission Design Challenge

Design a Mars Sample-Return Architecture

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Learning goals
  • Match instruments to the science goals of the challenge.
  • Balance mass, power, cost, risk, and communication throughput.
  • Explain your design tradeoffs in your own words.
Help & glossary
  • Meters update in real time so you can see the impact of each choice.
  • Errors are red; warnings are amber. You can still launch with warnings.
  • Your written explanation stays on this device.

This is an educational mission-design simulation. Scores and simplified engineering values do not represent an approved or operational NASA mission.

1. Briefing2. Platform3. Power4. Comms5. Instruments6. Timeline7. Explanation8. Results

Mission briefing

Cached samples are waiting on Mars. Your team must design the return architecture: a lander to retrieve and package the samples, a Mars ascent vehicle to lift them off Mars, and an Earth-return element. Every choice affects mass, power, cost, risk and mission timeline.

Destination
Mars — sample-cache site
Mission type
Sample return
Environment
dusty, cold-night, thin-atmosphere, radiation

Science goals

  • Return sealed samples to Earth for laboratory analysis.
  • Maintain sample integrity (thermal, contamination).
  • Confirm precise cache locations with imaging.

Sources