Two Companies Aim to Beat SpaceX to Mars With ‘Audacious’ Landing

Mr. Mueller mentioned the scale and form of the capsule could be the identical as that used for the InSight mission. “It’s like utilizing the identical kind of warmth defend supplies, very same parachute design,” he mentioned. “So we’re simply utilizing what NASA has already analyzed so much and confirmed on each mission of this dimension that has gone to Mars efficiently.”

The lander could be in regards to the dimension of InSight however lighter, Mr. Mueller mentioned. The essential configuration wouldn’t even embody photo voltaic panels and wouldn’t function for lengthy, solely till its batteries have been exhausted.

Mr. Mueller mentioned Impulse began speaking with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, which manages the InSight mission, this yr.

Nevertheless, a spokesman for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory mentioned there had not been a lot work between the laboratory and Impulse but. “It appears we’ve had some preliminary discussions with Impulse about this,” Andrew Good, the spokesman, mentioned. “However whereas they’ve been in search of to satisfy with us this yr, that assembly has not but occurred.”

The director of NASA’s Mars exploration program, Eric Ianson, mentioned by way of a spokeswoman on the company’s headquarters that NASA had not had any direct communications with Impulse and that it didn’t have perception into the specifics of what the corporate was seeking to do.

Relativity will not be the one personal house firm to announce planetary exploration missions.

In 2020, Rocket Lab mentioned it was planning to ship a small craft in 2023 that might fly by Venus and drop a probe to see whether or not there is perhaps indicators of life within the thick environment. It additionally has a modest NASA contract to launch two small orbiters to Mars as early as 2024. However Rocket Lab already has 25 profitable launches of its small Electron rocket, and final month it despatched CAPSTONE, one other small NASA-financed mission, towards the moon. (It’s to reach there in November).

A couple of years in the past SpaceX additionally had modest Martian plans, which it later deserted.

In 2016, the corporate introduced {that a} model of its Crew Dragon astronaut capsule — with none human passengers aboard — was to journey to the floor of Mars as quickly as 2018. In 2017, SpaceX canceled these plans, referred to as Purple Dragon, after it modified the capsule design to splash down within the ocean as a substitute of utilizing rocket engines to set down on land. (Water landings don’t work on Mars, the place there is no such thing as a flowing water.)