By 
July 14th, 2026
It is called the International Mars Prospecting Ride-Share System (IMPRESS).
The concept’s primary objective is to survey the Red Planet for extant life, but it also supports geophysical, soil chemistry, resource, and landing site risk assessments.
Funds from the NASA TechLeap Prize helped in blueprinting the IMPRESS prospecting platform, with a field-tested prototype expected to be ready in summer 2026.
Frequent, affordable, bold
Tagged as a “Frequent. Affordable. Bold.” approach to Mars subsurface exploration, IMPRESS is designed to make shallow-subsurface reconnaissance a recurring opportunity and to provide the distributed prospecting needed before later robotic and human missions commit to a landing site.
Image credit IMPRESS Spaceworks
IMPRESS is being led by Jan Špaček, founder, CEO, of the Agnostic Life Finding Association, Inc. “It is a new project to seek life on Mars with a swarm of planetary penetrators,” Špaček told Inside Outer Space.
“The IMPRESS swarms can be delivered to Mars either as a secondary payload on planned missions, such as the 2028 SR-1 Freedom/Skyfall mission, or as a primary payload on dedicated private or government missions,” explains a preprint of a manuscript headed for the journal Astrobiology.
Planetary penetrators
“Instead of relying on soft landers and drilling systems, IMPRESS deploys swarms of planetary penetrators that use descent kinetic energy to emplace instruments 0.2–1 meters below the surface,” explains the preprint.
The space-ready version of IMPRESS could be ready as soon as 2028. It would offer a mass-produced Mars exploration platform that can be deployed for as little as roughly $40,000 per probe.
Image credit IMPRESS Spaceworks
“These platforms are comparatively easy to handle and sterilize prior to launch, relative to larger landed systems, making them suitable for biological exploration,” the preprint adds.
This work was supported in part by NASA’s TechLeap Prize and in part by a grant from the CHiwi Foundation in Switzerland under its Call for Proposals 2025. The CHiwi Foundation supports scientific research, education, and innovation in advanced mathematics, alternative energy, and space exploration.
For more details, go to this informative video at:
https://youtu.be/Rm0GTQO7O4g?si=1h4Nyn34no7nxDC9
Also, go to Impress Spaceworks at:
Posted in Space News
