NASA will host a media teleconference at 11 a.m. EST Tuesday, Nov. 10, to discuss the findings and recommendations of the report by an agency-commissioned independent board about NASAs plans with ESA (European Space Agency) for a Mars Sample Return mission.
NASA established the Mars Sample Return (MSR) Independent Review Board (IRB) to evaluate the agencys early concepts for an international partnership with ESA to return the first samples from another planet. The report will be released at 9 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 10, on the agencys Reports and Transcripts webpage and includes the MSR IRBs findings and recommendations and NASAs responses.
During the teleconference, NASA science leadership and MSR IRB members will discuss the IRBs findings and recommendations for the agencys MSR architecture and what the next steps are for NASA to pursue the ambitious endeavor to collect and return pristine samples from Mars to the Earth.
The teleconference audio will stream live at:
Briefing participants include:
Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASAs Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
Jeffrey Gramling, Mars Sample Return program director, NASA Headquarters
David Thompson, MSR IRB chair, retired president of Orbital ATK
Maria Zuber, MSR IRB member and Standing Review Board Chair, Vice President for Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Peter Theisinger, MSR IRB member, employee at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory
