Text BoxNASA Capture, Containment, and Return System: Bringing Mars Samples to Earth

The Capture, Containment, and Return System (CCRS) project is NASA’s last step in bringing back Mars samples. CCRS will close a decades-long multi-mission and multi-agency effort to bring Mars surface samples back to Earth for scientific studies. CCRS would launch no earlier than 2027 on the European Earth Return Orbiter (ERO) spacecraft, which would provide communications relay for the Mars Sample Return ground missions, Perseverance rover and the Sample Retrieval Lander (SRL) (to be launched in 2028). The main mission for CCRS begins when the first-ever orbital planetary capture operation occurs with CCRS catching and securing the Orbiting Sample (OS) in Low Mars Orbit. From this point, the system would perform additional "firsts": it would autonomously contain the OS, expose its outside surface to ultraviolet (UV) radiation as required to clean potentially hazardous Mars particles, and assemble the Earth entry capsule, named Earth Entry System (EES), in orbit around Mars using a gantry mechanism. At approximately 2.8 lunar distances from Earth, or 3-days from entry into Earth’s atmosphere, CCRS would open its micrometeoroid shield and release the EES on a ballistic trajectory to Earth. The EES is designed to be a fully passive system that would enter the atmosphere and land without a parachute at the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR).