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Could Curiosity Save Our Wildest Martian Dreams?

Could hacking its own rover save NASA's Mars program?

After recent budget cuts to NASA's Mars program, the agency's dream of a sample return mission within the next decade is dead in the water. But the $2.5 billion dollar rover Curiosity is on its way to the red planet right now, and speculation is popping up online that the it could fairly easily be retrofitted with the hardware needed to collect and store samples. Theoretically NASA would just need one more mission to collect and return those samples, turning Curiosity into the first phase of the sample return dream. Piece of cake, right?

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See also: NASA’s Future with the Red Planet

Curiosity, the rover of the Mars Science Laboratory mission that launched last November, is the most sophisticated machine ever sent to the red planet. It marries lessons learned from previous missions to new innovative technologies, particularly where its power supply is concerned.
Mars landers and rovers have been using radioisotope electrical power and heating sources — radioisotope thermonuclear generators or RTGs — since the 1970s. The twin Viking landers that reached the planet in 1976 outlived their planned operational lifetime thanks to these power sources. The RTGs act like a battery, turning heat into electricity to keep a robot's computerized brain warm and humming in any season or time of day, making it nearly impervious to the freezing temperatures on Mars. That is, until the battery starts to die.

Curiosity has an ungraded power source — a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG). The lightweight and flexible modular battery was designed to meet a wider variety of mission goals on other planets and in deep space. It generates more power in smaller increments making its minimum operational lifetime about 14 years, easily outstripping NASA's planned one-year mission for Curiosity.
So, if Curiosity lasts thirteen years longer than expected, what better than to repurpose the rover into the first stage of a sample collection mission?

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Curiosity has an arm with a scoop, so picking up the samples is the easy part — one of its primary objectives is to analyze samples with its onboard instruments for signs of past or present life. Delivering those samples to the rover's back is also fairly simple for its robotic arm. It's possible to take advantage of Curiosity's extended lifetime to exploit its sample collecting abilities.

See also: The Surprisingly Long, Wonderful Life of the Mars Spirit Rover

Storing the samples is a challenge since the rover doesn't have the necessary hardware. A rack to store small vials filled with Martian rock and soil was unfortunately left off the list of last minute incidentals NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory thought to stick in Curiosity's carry-on right before launch.

But getting a storage rack to Mars is only a launch away, theoretically. NASA could send Curiosity an interplanetary care package during the 2014 or 2016 launch window. Aimed just right, it could land on the surface ahead of Curiosity, allowing the rover to collect it without deviating from its planned traverse across the surface. With its robotic arm, the rover could put the rack on its back and fill it with samples.

Another launch could deliver a second spacecraft to Mars. Curiosity could drive over to it, remove the sample rack from its back, and place it in a slot in the Earth return spacecraft that would launch and make the trip back home.

Whether or not this is something NASA would consider is, for now, anyone's guess. But it's a neat idea that harkens back to the creative problem solving of the agency's early years. Of course, if the complicated Sky Crane fails to deliver Curiosity to the Martian surface in August, the whole discussion is moot.