Le 8/21/14, 10:53 AM, David Spain a écrit :
On Thursday, August 21, 2014 9:09:06 AM UTC-4, Jeff Findley wrote:
SLS searching for missions to solve flight rate dilemma
...
Oddly enough, the flights that NASA is considering adding to the
manifest are for unmanned missions (e.g. Europa mission and Mars Sample
Return mission).

SLS to launch a Mars Sample Return toaster? How big is the returning sample going to be? A block of Mars soil the size of a Winnebago?


Well Luna 16 launched on a Proton-K/D, not a small rocket, returned 101
grams of lunar soil. I would expect that because of advances in
technology, a similar sized rocket today would return a sample better
chosen than simply taking the soil next at landing site but not
necessarily a much bigger sample. I wouldn't expect Winnebago sized
samples returning from a single rocket launch.

For a mission to Mars, the greater gravity well (both solar and Martian)
complicates things, but the thin atmosphere helps by giving most of the
deceleration for landing. I would think that a similar sized rocket
would bring back a smaller sample from Mars but less than an order
magnitude smaller.


Alain Fournier