14 DAY TRIAL // A NASA official has already begun outlining a new rover destined to explore the surface of the Red Planet, even though the last one the American space agency built is still a few weeks away from its destination. One thing is clear, the new machine will be cheaper than the Mars Science Laboratory.
Speaking on July 10 at the 2012 Farnborough International Airshow, in the UK, the director of the NASA Mars Exploration Program (MEP), Doug McCuistion, said that the upcoming robot must be way cheaper than the $2.5 billion MSL rover Curiosity.
According to the NASA official, the new mission would be developed in such a manner as to be ready for launch by 2018 to 2020. It would also feature larger parachutes, at least one atomic clock, and a series of inflatable decelerators called ballutes , the expert said.
Together, ballutes and atomic clocks can provide the basis for an accurate, effective landing system that would help mission controllers reduce the ellipse associated with landing any machine on Mars.
According to McCuistion, NASA will not have more than $800 million to spend on this mission over the next few years. But the official believes that this money could be put to good use, and turned into a rover capable of producing viable scientific results.
“That price point [$800 million] is frankly around the point of a Discovery mission. Those missions tend to be characterized by simple systems, not too challenging,” the NASA official told Space.
He added that the NASA Office of the Chief Technologist might have to handle financing the ballutes, the new parachutes, and the atomic clocks, since the MEP will most likely be strapped for cash for the foreseeable future.
In the case of the parachutes, for example, McCuistion wants to move from the 69-foot (21-meter) chutes used by the Viking landers to new, 98-foot (30-meter) ones, capable of producing more drag, and depositing larger payloads safely on the surface of Mars.
The future Martian mission could also come in the form of a lander, similar to the 2008 Phoenix Mars Lander mission, or as a Mars Exploration Rover-like (MER) rover, similar in design and capabilities to Spirit and Opportunity.
At this time, the next Martian mission NASA will conduct is the Mars Atmosphere Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, which is scheduled to arrive around the Red Planet in 2015. Its main mission will be to find out more about the world's atmosphere, including the source of its methane.