NASA and ESA Unveil Joint Mars Exploration Plan

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) have recently unveiled their joint plans of exploring Mars between 2015 and 2020. Under the agreement, ESA is to build a trace-gas orbiter, a spacecraft able to detect gas plumes emanating from the Red Planet and to image the surface. The Europeans will also deploy the large ExoMars rover, which is about the size of a Mini Cooper. NASA will deliver the European rover, as well as a robotic explorer of its own, a mid-sized sample-caching rover, Nature News reports.

“These two rovers will be focused on astrobiology – seeking the signs of life,” said on July 29 Doug McCuistion, who is the NASA Mars program chief. He was speaking to an advisory committee meeting of the US Mars community, which was held at the Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island. According to the expert, the decisions were made at the end of June, as officials from the two space agencies met in Plymouth, the United Kingdom, and discussed their options.

Speaking about the possibility of putting a new orbiter around Mars by 2016, Brown University geologist and chair of a NASA Mars advisory group Jack Mustard stated that “Scientists are definitely happy to have a viable opportunity for measurements. But it's far too new. No one knows what it means or how it's going to work out.” The other option is NASA's own Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, a large robot that is currently scheduled to launch in 2011. However, it ran severely over budget, and NASA believes its overall cost could end up being as high as $2.4 billion.

ESA agreed to delay the launch of ExoMars until 2018, though initial plans had it that the trace-gas orbiter and the European rover would fly on the same Atlas rocket. NASA hopes that, by then, its new sky-crane technology will be completed. With this method, the rovers are lowered by a crane-like system on the surface of the planet, and do not slam the ground at high speeds as until now. ExoMars' primary mission will be to dig as far as two meters underground, looking for sings of past life. The mid-sized NASA rover will store rocks aboard and await a far-off sample return mission to Earth.