NASA Unveils Plan for Mars Exploration

Oct. 26 -- NASA will probe Mars using orbiters, rovers and landers the space agency announced today, looking for details of the planet’s geology, climate and history.

Six major robotic missions are planned in the next 15 years as part of the overall study of Earth’s nearest neighbor, but NASA officials would not venture a guess as to when humans might make the journey to the Red Planet.

The new Mars plan would feature a combination of orbiting spacecraft and spaceships that would land on the planet, along with long-distance rovers, officials said.

Plan Will Be Flexible

The campaign will change depending on what each mission finds, said Scott Hubbard, Mars Program Director at NASA.

“It’s meant to be a robust, flexible, long-term program that will give us the highest chances for success,” he said.

The new Mars strategy would cost about $400 to $450 million a year for the next five years, according to officials.

NASA officials didn’t dwell on failures in the past. Without mentioning two major losses — the Mars Polar Lander and the MarsClimate Orbiter — Weiler told reporters, “We have to assumethat Mars will continue to surprise us.”

The strategic aim for Mars exploration remains the same asit was before the 1999 NASA failures: to follow the water insearch of traces of possible life on the planet.

The new plan for Mars postpones until at least 2011 a mission to collectsamples from the Martian surface and return them to Earth.Astronomers had hoped to get Mars soil samples by 2010.

Target Will Be Water

A sample return mission is seen as a key piece of thepuzzle of Martian water. Weiler recognized this, but noted theneed for careful planning for this expedition.

“Ultimately we want to go to Mars and get a sample andbring it back to Earth,” Weiler said. “But we have to be very,very sure that that billion-dollar mission to go get a sampleis going to the right place on Mars.”