To date, all major solar system bodies have received at least a preliminary inspection from satellites. The wealth of knowledge, discovery, and engineering success achieved thus far motivates a new era in space science and engineering: comprehensive exploration of the solar system. Robotic missions, such as Cassini, Juno, or the Mars Curiosity rover, have enticed us with exotic findings and observations about Earth’s planetary neighbors. Of them, Mars has been subject to the most intense scientific scrutiny, since it may have harbored life in the past and may even be home to microbial life today. While we learn and discover more about the vast diversity of environments that may be habitable through remote and in-situ observations, that scientific endeavor can only be truly satisfied
with detailed chemical and physical analysis by the scientists and facilities on Earth. To accomplish a Mars sample return mission, an ascent vehicle design is required. With the development and maturation of the Mars Sample Return mission, a Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) has been developed as a means of returning a sample from the surface of Mars to Earth for further scientific study. As with most interplanetary missions, the minimization of a spacecraft’s overall mass and the simultaneous maximization of its payload capabilities are of the utmost importance to mission design, with many iterations being tested and compared in order to obtain the optimal design whilst taking into account various trade-offs and compromises that need to be made along the way. As such, the following paper outlines our preliminary attempts at producing a MAV design that will minimize overall system mass for a given payload, and maximize reliability, by optimizing various parts of the MAVs design, including material selection and structures, staging and trajectory analysis, and allowing the MAV to reach its intended orbit whilst minimizing fuel use.