Nasa announces new rover mission to Mars in 2020 Options

[jsheff]

I hope all of you followed the link. It is fascinating how NASA projects are put together. The link above is a request for qualified people to send in a two page letter of application to be part of a 12-15 person Science Definition Team for the 2020 Mars Science Rover Mission (Mars - 2020). NASA will pick 12-15 people and a chairman. The committee will come up the Science Objectives (that several of you were prematurely complaining were missing) that will go into the Announcement of Opportunity---request for mission proposals.

More specifically from the link:

The members of the Mars-2020 SDT will provide NASA with scientific assistance and direction during preliminary concept definition (Pre-Phase A) activities. Near-term activities of the SDT will include the establishment of baseline mission science objectives and a realistic scientific concept of surface operations; development of a strawman payload/instrument suite as proof of concept; and suggestions for threshold science objectives/measurements for a preferred mission viable within resource constraints provided by NASA Headquarters. The products developed by the SDT will be used to develop the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Announcement of Opportunity (AO) that will outline the primary science objectives of the baseline mission and the character of the payload-based investigations solicited under open competition via the AO. The SDT will be formed in January 2013, and disbanded after the work is complete approximately four months later. All reports and output materials of the Mars-2020 SDT will be publicly available, and the SDT will be disbanded prior to any future Announcement of Opportunity (AO) for participation in the Mars-2020 mission, including provision of instrumentation and investigation support. Participation in the Mars-2020 SDT is open to all qualified and interested individuals.

And so they've announced the SDT for the 2020 mission:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/m2020/mission/missionteam/sdt/

- John Sheff
Cambridge, MA

[Explorer1]

Your link is broken; it's http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/m2020/mission/missionteam/sdt/

Some well-known names!

[stone]

Only one from GB, not really an european, and noone from ESA gives an impression of what NASA thinks a future cooperation. Very sad to read that list in that respect.

The persons I read are all more than qualified to do the job, they will do the right thing fast enough so lets wait for their report.

[mcaplinger]

Only one from GB, not really an european, and noone from ESA gives an impression of what NASA thinks a future cooperation. Very sad to read that list in that respect.

The 2020 mission is not a joint NASA/ESA mission. If you look at missions that have been, you'll see that the SDT has been jointly selected by NASA and ESA.

Future cooperation is all well and good (this isn't the appropriate forum to discuss the pros and cons of that), but this particular mission is 100% funded by NASA AFAIK. I'm not certain of the mechanics but I don't think NASA will pay the expenses of a foreign national, and since ESA wouldn't in this case, participation would have had to be self-funded (partly speculation on my part because I couldn't find the solicitation online any more, but I think likely.)

[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.