ExoMars Options

[Stu]

French propose downsizing ExoMars...

http://www.space.com/news/090130-sn-france...s-concerns.html

Surprised? Moi?

[tedstryk]

French propose downsizing ExoMars...

http://www.space.com/news/090130-sn-france...s-concerns.html

Surprised? Moi?

I don't think it is a bad idea if it means it will actually get built instead of always staying 7 or 8 years in the future.

[Stu]

I don't think it is a bad idea if it means it will actually get built instead of always staying 7 or 8 years in the future.

Me neither, and it might well be the reality check the mission needs, but I just can't shake this gut feeling that it's never going to reach Mars. I don't like the feeling, and I desperately hope I'm wrong, but with this project rapidly taking on the shape of a political hot potato - or croissant - and with the current financial situation, I fear ExoMars is already feeling the downdraught of circling vultures' wings on its solar panels.

[djellison]

MER sized vehicle with an MSL sized payload in an untested landing system. I never have, and doubt I ever will like the concept of ExoMars unless it gets a significant architecture change.

[ngunn]

That opens up an interesting question. How would knowledgeable members here go about that mission re-design? I'm sure a number of individual members will have good suggestions - maybe there could even be a collective effort leading to a UMSF shadow-proposal? (Or maybe ustrax will dust off his trusty crystal ball and just tell us how it's going to be? )

[djellison]

EU lead exobiological payload, US remote sensing instruments, using a deep-drill on a pallet lander delivered by an MSL derived descent stage launched on an Ariane 5.

OR

Scrap the whole thing and do netlander / metnet with a European orbiter.

[helvick]

I'd go with Doug's second option - it has a higher likelihood of success, has some redundancy, builds capabilities not planned elsewhere and provides a practical stepping stone for ESA to consolidate actual lander experience for an extended period of time while working on developing more advanced capabilities like deep drilling, sample return, ballons\micro gliders or whatever your chosen next gen rocket science tech might be.

Do this right and they are in a strong position to get increased funding in future by having a proven track record, do it wrong and the distributed nature of ESA's funding and control will make it very hard to follow on with more advanced landers on Mars or elsewhere.

[SFJCody]

Both these ideas are sound. I always wondered why things swung away from deep drills and netlanders and towards more rovers. Surely not a bandwagon jumping response to the success of MER?

[Mariner9]

I have always assumed that ESA moved away from the netlander concept and went with a rover because the US had flown MER. (I suspect that was what you were getting at.)


And as we have discussed on this board for a long time now, the mission has always suffered from either an overly optimistic low-ball budget, or an over-ambituous architecture, frequently both.

I'm glad to see the French pushing for some down-sizing. Better a modest mission that suceeds, versus a kick-ass mission that either fails or never even leaves the launch pad.

It is especially welcome now that the US has announced that it is interested in collaborating on the 2016 mission. I was afraid that the US technical contribution (roughly in the 400 million dollar range) might encourage the mission planners to keep thinking big. Or worse, even expand the scope.

[djellison]

$400M. That's a nice big orbiter. EU provides a netlander like payload. Nice clean interfaces for ITAR. Brilliant. We need 400kg of paylod for 3x 100kg landers, 3 x Metnet landers, and the associated bolt-on-hardware.

[Mariner9]

I think that is a reasonable scenario. I would like to see something like that happen.

What worries me is that some people could see the $400 million and say "Great! Now we can do the big rover the way we wanted to all along, and add the telecommunications orbiter to it that we've been wanting."


Hopefully pressure from the French, and other sane heads, will prevail.

[vjkane]

$400M. That's a nice big orbiter. EU provides a netlander like payload. Nice clean interfaces for ITAR. Brilliant. We need 400kg of paylod for 3x 100kg landers, 3 x Metnet landers, and the associated bolt-on-hardware.

$400M is light for a Mars orbiter. MAVEN is ~$450M. Mars Science Orbiter is ~$1.1B. The estimated cost by NASA for a 4 node network mission is ~$1.2B (not including an orbiter). The capabilities of the landers wasn't specified, but the general idea is a seismic station, meteorology, heat flow, and high bandwidth (seismic data is voluminous). More cut rate versions of the stations could be done. The Finnish MetNet, for example, should be much cheaper (if they work), but they would lack the high bandwidth for high value seismometry.

The orbiter should have meteorology instruments and a wide angle camera for monitoring the atmosphere. It could be done for $400M, but I don't know if that would pay for an orbiter in a low orbit ideal for communications.

[Paolo]

There is a nice article on ExoMars on the May issue of AIAA's "Aerospace America"

[Stu]

BBC reports "Europe's Mars mission scaled back"...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8102086.stm

[tedstryk]

A U.S. launch vehicle? Didn't see that one coming.