Nasa announces new rover mission to Mars in 2020 Options

[Mongo]

NASA plans Mars rover remake for 2020

NASA today announced a $1.5 billion plan to build another Mars rover based on the design of its current Curiosity rover, with the intention of sending it to the Red Planet in 2020 and perhaps storing up samples for later return to Earth.

The move comes less than a year after the space agency said it couldn't afford to contribute $1.4 billion to the European-led Exomars missions, and it seems likely to stir new debate within the planetary science community. Hoped-for missions to other interplanetary destinations, such as the Jovian moon Europa, could conceivably be impacted further by the revised plans for Mars exploration.

John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters, insisted that the budget could handle the new commitment. "This mission concept fits within the current and projected Mars exploration budget, builds on the exciting discoveries of Curiosity, and takes advantage of a favorable launch opportunity," he said in a NASA news release.

He said the future rover would be built on the same basic design used for the Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in August, and thus capitalize on the design work that was done during Curiosity's development for its $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission. Like Curiosity, the new rover would be nuclear-powered, thanks to a spare radioisotope thermoelectric generator, Grunsfeld said.

Grunsfeld announced the plan during a town-hall session at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco. Based on Twitter updates from the meeting, reaction was deeply mixed. "NASA town meeting audience is very quiet," Lindy Elkins-Tanton of the Carnegie Institution of Washington tweeted. "I think we are all in shock."

Projected budget cuts have cast a pall of uncertainty over future plans for interplanetary probes, but the idea of bringing samples back from Mars for study on Earth is on top of planetary scientists' priority list for the next decade. Grunsfeld told his AGU audience that the rover could have the capability to gather and store samples for later return, depending on how its science mission is defined.

NASA said a science definition team would be selected to outline the mission's objectives, and that the selection of science and instruments for the mission would then be openly competed. The mission would also help lay the groundwork for eventual human exploration of Mars, the agency said.

"The Obama administration is committed to a robust Mars exploration program," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in today's statement. "With this next mission, we're ensuring America remains the world leader in the exploration of the Red Planet, while taking another significant step toward sending humans there in the 2030s."

Two rovers are currently in operation on Mars — Curiosity and Opportunity. Meanwhile, three working spacecraft are orbiting the Red Planet: the European Space Agency's Mars Express as well as NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey orbiter. Next year, NASA is due to launch the $500 million MAVEN orbiter to study Mars' upper atmosphere. In 2016, NASA plans to send a $425 million lander called InSight to delve into Mars' depths.

NASA also plans to participate in the European Space Agency's Exomars program by contributing radios for an orbiter and lander due for launch in 2016, as well as scientific apparatus for a 2018 rover. But the space agency had to trim back its commitment to Exomars early this year, in large part due to the need to cover cost overruns on the James Webb Space Telescope. The Russian Space Agency is filling the gap left by NASA's pullback.

U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who has been critical of past cutbacks in NASA's planetary science program, applauded the plan announced today.

"In its few short months on Mars, Curiosity has broadened our understanding of our planetary neighbor, and the findings announced thus far point to even greater discoveries as Curiosity continues to explore Gale Crater and Mount Sharp," Schiff said in a written statement. "An upgraded rover with additional instrumentation and capabilities is a logical next step that builds upon now-proven landing and surface operations systems."

However, Schiff said he favored launching the rover in 2018 — when the alignment of Earth and Mars is more favorable, permitting the launch of a heavier payload. "I will be working with NASA, the White House and my colleagues in Congress to see whether advancing the launch date is possible, and what it would entail," he said.

[vjkane]

I believe that NASA has said that it is open to foreign instrument contributions for the mission that fit with the science goals that this science team will define

[stone]

To reduce costs for NASA a lot of the instruments will be delivered from somewhere else. The insight mission is a good example for this all the big instruments are coming from europe.

To invite an scientis from ESA has nothing to do who will pay for the mission or that ESA has to pay for the travel it is a sign of cooperation and respect, this is missing in the decision.

[mcaplinger]

To reduce costs for NASA a lot of the instruments will be delivered from somewhere else. The insight mission is a good example for this all the big instruments are coming from europe.

The funding dynamics for a Discovery mission are considerably different than those for a mission where the instruments are selected in an open competition.

A more comparable situation would be the SHARAD instrument on MRO, which was funded by ASI rather than ESA. I'm not sure if ESA has a program similar to the NASA Mission of Opportunity, which provides funding for US instruments to fly on other nations' missions. I don't recall for sure, but I think that SHARAD was selected by a process outside of the general AO for MRO. DAN and REMS are similar situations on MSL.

It will be interesting to see what the 2020 AO actually says on the topic of non-US instruments, and whether ESA or the European national space agencies make funding available for European instruments.

[stone]

I never heard of an ESA funded instrument so far. They are always funded by the national agencies. So the Exomars rover will cost 1.2 GEuro but this does not include the instruments because they are funded by the national agencies.

Insight my impression was insight was cheaper because it uses spare parts of Phoenix and the instruments come from abroad making it an appealing mission in a time of low budget because an increase in the price for the system is unlikely and a rise in the costs for the instruments is payed by somebody else.

[vjkane]

One low hanging opportunity would be to use some of the ExoMars instruments in the 2020 rover. MOMA would be one opportunity, especially since NASA is contributing to its development. Some redesign would be needed for the ExoMars instruments to physically fit in the 2020 rover, interface with the sample delivery mechanism, talk with the 2020 rover computer, etc, but it should still be much lower cost than developing a flight instrument from a bread board design.

[stone]

ExoMars instruments either from the Pateur-Payload or from the no longer existing Humboldt-Payload (geophysics and weather) are cheap for NASA with the exceptions of Urey and MOMA, both have some or all money from NASA. After a lot of instruments had to be left away from ExoMars there is a bunch of well developed instruments out there.

The work to make MOMA 2020 ready are easier in one part, because MOMA is using a lot of the technology developed for SAM (the same people at Goddard work on the hardware for the MS and the main electronics).

More interesting will be what the rover will become: Search for organics, geology or geophysics rover. The instrument selection comes well after this decision.

A PanCam is the only thing which is not left away.