Mars rover twin for 2020
2012-12-05 10:15
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NASA
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San Francisco - Nasa plans to follow-up its
Mars rover Curiosity mission with a duplicate rover that could collect and
store samples for return to Earth, the agency's lead scientist said on Tuesday.
The new rover will use spare parts and
engineering models developed for Curiosity, which is four months into a planned
$2.5 billion, two-year mission on Mars to look for habitats that could have
supported microbial life.
Replicating the rover's chassis, sky-crane
landing system and other gear will enable Nasa to cut the cost of the new
mission to about $1.5 billion, John Grunsfeld, the US space agency's associate
administrator for science, said at the American Geophysical Union conference in
San Francisco.
Budget shortfalls forced Nasa to pull out of
a series of joint missions with Europe, designed to return rock and soil
samples from Mars in the 2020s. Europe instead will partner with Russia for the
launch vehicle and other equipment that was to have been provided by Nasa.
Grunsfeld said Nasa will provide a key
organics experiment for Europe's ExoMars rover, as well as engineering and
mission support under the agency's proposed budget for the year beginning October
1, 2013.
Details about what science instruments would
be included on the new rover, whether or not it would have a cache for samples,
and the landing site have not yet been determined.
Nasa plans to set up a team of scientists to
refine plans for the rover and issue a solicitation next summer.
The National Academy of Sciences last year
ranked a Mars sample return mission as its top priority in planetary science
for the next decade.
"The (science) community already has
come forward with a very clear message about what the content of the next Mars
surface mission should be, and that is to cache the samples that will come back
to Earth," said Steve Squyres with Cornell University.
"That's really a necessary part of
having this mission," he said.
