Mission Analysis for LifeSprings: Mars Sample Return from Columbia Hills

Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission is one of the most scientifically valuable missions to understand the origin of life and the Solar System. However, because of the extremely high costs, there is a strong motivation to achieve a lower-cost mission architecture. MSR concepts typically require multiple spacecraft and complex operations; thus it remains a high-level difficulty in mission architecture, and leaves a margin for further study. One of the solutions to achieving a low-cost MSR mission, the LifeSpringsMars mission concept, has been studied. This paper proposes the concept of the LifeSpringsMars mission and deep space sample relay scenario, which is one of the potential solutions of a low-cost MSR mission architecture. To assess its feasibility, we employ stochastic trajectory optimization that explicitly accounts for uncertainties, and compare their performance against conventional rendezvous strategies in Mars' Low Orbit.