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DeepSpace: Europe reveals Mars sample return spacecraft as SpaceX builds Starships

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7 years ago

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The European Space Agency (ESA) revealed a concept for a spacecraft that would work alongside NASA to return samples of Martian soil to Earth. (ESA)

Eric Ralph · May 28th, 2019

Welcome to the latest edition of DeepSpace! Each week, Teslarati space reporter Eric Ralph hand-crafts this newsletter to give you a breakdown of what’s happening in the space industry and what you need to know. To receive this newsletter (and others) directly and join our member-only Slack group, give us a 3-month trial for just $5.

On May 27th, the European Space Agency (ESA) published updated renders of a proposed spacecraft, called the Earth Return Orbiter (ERO). ERO would be the last of four critical elements of a joint NASA-ESA Mars sample return mission, meant to return perhaps 1-5 kg (2-11 lb) of Martian samples to scientists on Earth. In a best-case scenario, such a sample return is unlikely to happen before the tail-end of the 2020s and will probably slip well into the 2030s, barring any unexpected windfalls of funding or political support.

Enter SpaceX, a private American company developing Starship/Super Heavy – a massive, next-generation launch vehicle – with the goal of landing dozens of tons of cargo and just as many humans on Mars as few as 5-10 years from now. The radically different approaches of SpaceX and NASA/ESA are bound to produce equally different results, while both are expected to cost no less than $5B-$10B to be fully realized. What gives?

The high price of guaranteed success

  • As proposed, the Mars sample return mission will be an extraordinary technical challenge.
    • At a minimum, the current approach involves sending a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) rocket from Earth to Mars, landing the SSTO with extreme accuracy on the back of a new Mars lander, deploying a small rover to gather the sample container, loading that container onto the tiny rocket, launching said rocket into Mars orbit, grabbing the sample with large orbiter launched from Earth, and returning said sample to Earth where it will reenter the atmosphere and be safely recovered.
  • This downright Rube Golberg machine-esque architecture is nevertheless the best currently available with current mindsets and hardware. It’s also likely the only way NASA or ESA will independently acquire samples of Mars within the next few decades, barring radical changes to both the mindsets and technologies familiar and available to the deeply bureaucratic spaceflight agencies.
  • However, this is by no means an attempt to downplay the demonstrated expertise and capabilities of the space agencies and their go-to contractors. Both ESA and NASA have a decades-long heritage of spectacular achievements in robotic space exploration, reaching – however briefly, in some cases – almost every major planet and moon in the solar system.
    • The NASA-supported Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) remains a world-leading expert of both designing, building, and landing large, capable, and long-lived rovers/landers on the surface of Mars. JPL also has a track record of incredible success with space-based orbiters, including Cassini (Saturn), Magellan (Venus), Galileo (Jupiter), Voyager (most planets, now in interstellar space), Stardust (comet sample return), Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO, Mars orbiter) and more.
  • This success, however, can often come with extreme costs. NASA’s next Mars rover – essentially a modified copy of the Curiosity rover currently operating on Mars and a critical component of the proposed sample return – is likely to cost more than $2B, while Curiosity cost ~$2.5B. The Cassini Saturn orbiter cost around ~$3.5B for 15 years of scientific productivity. ESA’s Rosetta/Philae comet rendezvous cost at least $2B total. In the scheme of things, it would be hard to think of a more inspiring way to spend that money, but the fact remains that these missions are extremely expensive.

High risk, high reward

  • The price of missions like those above may, in fact, be close to their practical minimum, at least relative to the expectations of those footing the bill. However, it’s highly likely that similar results could be achieved on far tighter budgets, another way to say that far more returns could potentially be derived from the same investment.
    • The easiest way to explain this lies in the fact that the governments sponsoring and funding ESA and NASA have grown almost dysfunctionally risk-averse, to the extent that failure really isn’t an option in the modern era. Stakeholders – often elected representatives – expect success and often demand a guaranteed return on their support before choosing to fight for a given program’s funding.
    • As it turns out, an unwillingness to accept more than a minute amount of risk is not particularly compatible with affordably attempting to do things that are technically challenging and have often never been done before. That happens to be a great summary of spaceflight.
    • As risk aversion and the need for guaranteed success grew hand-in-hand, a sort of paradox formed. As politicians strove to ensure that space agency funding was efficiently used, space agencies became far more conservative (minimizing results and the potential for leaps forward) and the cost of complex, capable spacecraft grew dramatically.
    • The end result: spacecraft that are consistently reliable, high-performance, derivative, and terrifyingly expensive.
  • SpaceX is in many ways an anathema of the low-risk, medium-reward, high-cost approach that government space agencies and their dependent contractors have gravitated towards over the last 40-50 years. Instead, SpaceX accepts medium to high risk to attain great rewards at a cost that space agencies like NASA and ESA are often unable to accept as possible after decades of conservatism.
    • This is the main reason that it’s possible that NASA/ESA and SpaceX will both succeed in accomplishing goals at a dramatically disproportionate scale with roughly the same amount of funding.
    • If NASA/ESA bite the bullet and begin to seriously fund their triple-launch Mars Sample Return program, the missions will take a decade or longer and cost something like $5 million per gram of soil returned to Earth, but success will be all but guaranteed.
    • Both SpaceX’s Starship/Super Heavy and Mars colonization development programs run significant risks of hitting major obstacles, suffering catastrophic failures, and could even result in the death of crew members aboard the first attempted missions to Mars.
    • For that accepted risk, the rewards could be unfathomable and the costs revolutionary. SpaceX could very well beat the combined might of ESA and NASA to return large samples of Martian soil, rock, and water to Earth, all while launching ~100,000 kg into Martian orbit instead of the sample return’s ~10 kg.
    • In a best-case scenario, SpaceX could land the first uncrewed Starship on Mars as early as 2022 or 2024. Barring some unforeseen catastrophe or the company’s outright collapse, that first uncrewed Mars landing might happen as late as the early 2030s, around the same time as NASA and ESA’s ~10kg of Mars samples will likely be reentering Earth’s atmosphere.
  • Regardless of which approach succeeds first, space exploration fans and space scientists will have a spectacular amount of activity to be excited about over the next 10-20 years.
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– Eric
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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Elon Musk hints at Tesla Cybercab’s next market

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10 hours ago

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September 8, 2026

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(Credit: Teslarati)

After launching in Austin, Texas, last week, Tesla is looking to expand the Cybercab to new parts of the United States in an effort that will see the driverless, steering wheel-less, and pedal-less vehicle chauffeur people around as part of the Robotaxi ride-hailing service.

However, the expansion will go far beyond the United States, and CEO Elon Musk revealed he hopes Europe will be the next market where Cybercab will be operational.

Musk has publicly expressed hope that Tesla’s Cybercab robotaxi will reach Europe in the near future.

On September 8, Tesla’s Chief Executive quoted a German rider who had just completed a trip in Austin, Texas, and wrote that he hoped the vehicle would not take years to arrive in Germany. Musk replied with a short but notable message: “Hopefully soon in Europe too.”

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The comment arrived only days after Tesla opened Cybercab ride-hailing to the public in Austin. The two-seat vehicle has no steering wheel or pedals and relies entirely on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software. Early passengers have described the rides as quiet, smooth, and more stylish than competing robotaxis such as Waymo.

Austin is currently the only city where members of the public can hail a Cybercab through Tesla’s Robotaxi app. The initial fleet is small; Texas registration records show only a few dozen of the purpose-built vehicles on the road.

Tesla set to open Cybercab rides to the public, with no steering wheel or pedals

Tesla has also been operating a larger number of conventional Model Y robotaxis in the same area, but the Cybercab itself represents the company’s first dedicated, controls-free taxi design.

Europe presents a different regulatory picture. The European Union does not permit manufacturers to self-certify vehicles the way Tesla did in the United States.

Type-approval rules and a small-series limit of 1,500 automated vehicles per type per year apply across the bloc.

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Supervised Full Self-Driving has gained provisional approval in several member states through national recognition of Dutch certification, yet unsupervised robotaxi operation remains a separate and more distant step. Tesla has not announced a European launch city, date, or approval pathway for the Cybercab.

Musk himself has previously cautioned that the company does not control European regulators. In an earnings call earlier in 2026, he noted that even supervised FSD took an “immense amount of time” to clear and that unsupervised service would be “somewhat at the mercy of the governments in Europe and the EU.”

The latest social-media remark therefore functions more as an expression of intent than a timetable.

If the Cybercab eventually reaches European streets, it would mark a significant expansion of Tesla’s robotaxi ambitions beyond the United States. For now, the vehicle remains an Austin-only experience, and the gap between Musk’s hope and actual deployment will be decided by regulators rather than by engineering alone.

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Tesla Cybercab improvements are already on the minds of company engineers

Published

12 hours ago

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September 8, 2026

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Credit: Tesla Europe & Middle East | X

Tesla Cybercab might have just rolled out to the public as it entered the company’s Robotaxi suite in Austin this past week. However, the vehicle might already be on its way to becoming even better, as the company is asking riders to describe what they’d like to see improved with the Cybercab.

Tesla sent a rider experience survey to Cybercab passengers only days after paid rides began in Austin. The questionnaire asks how satisfied riders were with the overall trip. Then it requests star ratings for availability and wait time, door functionality, vehicle touchscreen, mobile app experience, seat comfort, interior space, ride comfort, cleanliness, and cargo space.

A later section asks which features riders would most like to have and allows selection of up to three items from a list that includes heated seats, ventilated seats, fully reclining seats, a tray table, a wireless phone charger, a better sound system, and more storage. Respondents may also choose none of these or write in another idea. The survey closes with a recommendation score from zero to ten.

This rapid request for input illustrates Tesla’s habit of treating early users as collaborators rather than mere customers. The company has long refined vehicles through software updates and hardware changes informed by real-world use across its passenger cars.

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Collecting structured opinions so soon after commercial service started shows the same mindset applied to a purpose-built autonomous taxi. The questions themselves reveal an openness to cabin changes even after the first vehicles reached public streets, which is no surprise.

Tesla has always hoped to cater a great experience to anyone in its vehicles, which is why so many fan-requested features have made it into its vehicles.

Replies already circulating online favor reclining seats, tray tables, wireless charging, improved audio, and extra room when seats fold back.

Tesla Cybercabs narrowly miss deadly Amazon cargo plane crash

Those preferences point toward comfort upgrades that Tesla can implement in later production batches or through cabin revisions. Because the Cybercab is designed around software first principles, many requested amenities can arrive faster than in traditional automakers.

Tesla’s willingness to survey riders immediately after launch therefore makes near-term cabin and experience improvements likely as the team reviews responses and iterates toward a more refined robotaxi people will choose daily.

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Cybertruck

Tesla Cybertruck engineer reveals new changes in ‘constantly evolving’ pickup

Published

16 hours ago

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September 8, 2026

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Credit: Joe Tegtmeyer | YouTube

Tesla Cybertruck Lead Engineer Wes Morrill revealed the company has made several changes to the all-electric pickup, which he calls a “living thing, constantly evolving and improving.”

Cybertruck is manufactured at Tesla’s Gigafactory Texas just outside of Austin, and over the past few years, Tesla has continued to make small changes to the pickup to improve everything from cost, reliability, serviceablility, and manufacturability.

“The finish line isn’t getting to production. A product is a living thing, constantly evolving and improving,” Morrill added.

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Some of those changes are yet to be revealed, but perhaps the most notable one was the change Tesla made to the aero shield that sits underneath the truck. In the past, it was aluminum, but now the Cybertruck is using a self-reinforcing polypropylene.

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Morrill said that the polypropylene is “stretched into fibers and then laminated into the form,” and is much more durable, much lighter, and significantly cheaper than aluminum when it is manufactured this way.

It also enabled some improvements in the geometry of the Cybertruck, improving the manufacturing around the bolts and edges, in addition to minor form changes. These all benefitted the Cybertruck in more ways than one: specifically with durability and improved drag.

Typically, Teslas are not necessarily identified by model year because these changes are fluid and occur when the company sees fit to implement them. It is not like other automotive companies, which usually make sweeping manufacturing changes when building a new model year.

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Instead, Teslas are recognized by their “generation” or “era.” For example, those with a newer Model Y might refer to their car as a “Juniper.” This is the same with Model 3, as many refer to the new body style as the “Highland.”

Tesla’s manufacturing changes are proof of the company’s constant need to improve its products and move things forward with its vehicles. There is no need to drag one’s feet and wait until next year if the product can be made better right now, and that’s precisely what Tesla did with the Cybertruck.

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