Mars Sample Return Surface Relay Planning and Coordination

The Mars Sample Return (MSR) Campaign is acoordinated effort between NASA and ESA to return samplesfrom the surface of Mars. For the first time, there would bemultiple surface assets operating in a local region, sharing relaypasses from a single orbiter. Furthermore, MSR’s constrainedsurface timeline drives the need for each surface asset tomaximize their productivity and not let any sols go to waste. Toaddress these risks, MSR has developed tools and performedcareful analysis to architect the relay system to support all MSRsurface assets by allocating passes in a deliberate manner thatmaximizes overall productivity. In this paper, we focus on theMars Asset Relay Mission Link Allocation DesignEnvironment (MARMALADE), a tool designed by missionsystems engineers at JPL to allocate passes to various MSRsurface assets to maximize their operational efficiency. Theallocations are meant to maximize campaign productivity, andenable the campaign to march towards its primary surfacemission goal: to deliver samples to orbit in a timely manner forrendezvous with the Earth Return Orbiter (ERO) and return toEarth. The MARMLADE tool and its results are used to assistmission planners at the campaign- and project-level byproviding quantitative sensitivities to hardware trades, such asdifferent telecom architectures, operational trades such asoperating times and durations on Mars, and human factorstrades such as staffing windows and shifts on Earth.MARMLADE is enabling the development of a sound missionsystem and operations plan early in the mission phase.