Future Mars Missions

Over the next three decades, NASA will send robotic probes to explore our solar system, and will launch new space telescopes to search for planets beyond our solar system.   These robotic explorers will pursue scientific questions, demonstrate breakthrough technologies, identify space resources, and extend an advanced telepresence that will send imagery back to Earth.  This visionary program will build on scientific discoveries from past missions and incorporate the lessons learned from previous mission successes and failures.

NASA will launch dedicated robotic missions that will demonstrate new technologies and enhance our scientific knowledge of these destinations.   These new technologies and discoveries will lead the way for more extensive robotic missions and eventually human missions.   The first human explorers will be sent to the Moon as early as 2015, as a stepping-stone to demonstrate sustainable approaches to exploring Mars and beyond.  

The Mars Network is being studied as a possible future element of NASA's Mars exploration program. It is designed to support surface exploration, sample return missions, robotic outposts, and eventual human exploration. The network would develop a communications capability that would provide a substantial increase in data rates and connectivity from Mars to Earth and develop an in situ (in place) navigation capability to enable more precise targeting and location information on approach and at Mars.

The network would be composed of a constellation of microsatellites (Microsats) and one or more larger Mars areostationary relay satellites (MARSats). The Microsats would serve both as communication relays between Mars exploration elements (landers, rovers, balloons, airplanes, etc.) and the Earth and as navigational aids for the exploration elements. MARSats, on the other hand, would be much like the geostationary communications satellites in Earth orbit. These satellites orbit the Earth, along its equatorial plane, at the same rate as the Earth rotates. In so doing, they are always positioned over the same region on Earth. In the case of MARSat, however, the satellite would orbit Mars, not the Earth; therefore the orbit would be areostationary (from the Greek god of war, Ares; the Romans called him Mars) rather than geostationary (geo = Earth).

This network will connect to the Internet, making nearly real-time images from Mars accessible to everyone. It will create an Earth-Mars Internet, the first step towards an Interplanetary Internet. The satellites will form a Martian counterpart of the global positioning system, pinpointing locations on and near the surface of Mars with accuracy down to a few meters or tens of meters.

With the Mars Network, we would have in place the core capability to visit and explore sites all over Mars and bring the virtual reality of these explorations to homes and schools all over Earth.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter 2005

Launch: August 12, 2005 

Mars Arrival: March 2006

During recent months, NASA has been developing a long-term Mars exploration program that charts a course for the next two decades. The new program incorporates the lessons learned from previous mission successes and failures, and builds on scientific discoveries from past missions. International participation, especially from Italy and France, will add significantly to the plan. On August 12, 2005, NASA launched a powerful scientific orbiter, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on an Atlas V rocket on a seven-month journey to Mars.  This mission will conduct remote sensing of the planet's surface to identify evidence of past or present water and also help identify safe and scientifically exciting landing sites for future robotic and perhaps someday human missions.  The '05 orbiter will also study the climate to see if water is released into the atmosphere during different seasons of the Martian year.  The Reconnaissance Orbiter will also establish a telecommunications link for future missions.  Orbiters provide more powerful relay communications capabilities for vehicles on the Martian surface.

The $720 million mission is divided into two parts.  During its first two years, the orbiter will help build on NASA's knowledge of the history of ice on the planet.  Equipped with the largest telescopic camera ever sent to another planet, the orbiter will also collect data that will help NASA plan where to land two robotic explorers later this decade.  The Phoenix Mars Scout, in search of organic chemicals, will be launched in 2007, and the Mars Science Laboratory will follow two years later.

During the second phase of its mission, the orbiter will serve as a communications messenger between the robotic explorers on Mars and Earth.  The orbiter has a powerful antenna that can transmit 10 times mroe data per minute than the current trio of satellites positioned around the planet.

The future of Mars Exploration holds even greater rewards: long-distance surface mobility, improved imaging, subsurface exploration, and even life-detection technologies. New scientific and technological knowledge is passed on from one mission to the next, not only improving our journeys into space, but also providing benefits here on Earth.

For more information on the design of Mars exploration vehicles visit these sites:

Lander designs

Orbiter designs

Rovers

Mars Exploration Missions

Smart Lander and Long-range Rover

Target Launch: Late 2007 

A long-range, long-duration rover equipped to perform many scientific studies of Mars and to demonstrate the technology for accurate landing and hazard avoidance may be launched as early as 2007. The CNES (French Space Agency) plans to launch a remote sensing orbiter and four small "Netlanders". The ASI (Italian Space Agency) plans to launch a communications orbiter to link to the Netlanders and future missions.

Mars Telecommunications Orbiter

Target Launch: September 2009
Mars Arrival: September 2010

The Mars Telecommunications Orbiter will serve as the hub of a growing interplanetary Internet on Mars.   NASA's Mars Telecommunications Orbiter will be the first spacecraft to travel to another planet for the primary purpose of relaying communications to and from Earth.   Rovers, science stations, and orbiting spacecraft will all communicate with Earth by sending and receiving signals via the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter. The spacecraft will be in contact with Earth almost around the clock, because its orbit will place it 20 times farther from the planet's surface than other spacecraft, meaning it will nearly always have a direct line of sight to Earth. The Mars Telecommunications Orbiter will fly above the surface of Mars at a distance of 5,000 kilometers (3,000 miles).

During its 10-year mission in orbit, the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter will send the equivalent of three full compact disks of data to Earth each day. These will include data from the Mars Science Laboratory, which will land on Mars about a month after the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter enters orbit around the planet, and deploy a robotic rover to conduct more detailed scientific observations of the Martian surface than ever before.

Mars Science Laboratory
Target Launch: December 2009 

Mars Arrival: Ocotber 2010

The Mars Science Laboratory is a mission with instruments from Russia, Spain, and Canada as well as the United States.   Building on the success of the two rover geologists that arrived at Mars in January 2004, NASA's next rover mission is being planned for travel to Mars before the end of the decade. The Mars Science Laboratory would collect Martian soil samples and rock cores and analyze them for organic compounds and environmental conditions that could have supported microbial life now or in the past

Mars Science Laboratory is intended to be the first planetary mission to use precision landing techniques, steering itself toward the Martian surface similar to the way the space shuttle controls its entry through the Earth's upper atmosphere

NASA plans to select a landing site on the basis of highly detailed images sent to Earth by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter beginning in 2006, in addition to data from earlier missions.

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Future Mars Opportunities

In the second decade, NASA plans additional science orbiters, rovers and landers, and the first mission to return the most promising Martian samples to Earth. Current plans call for the first sample return mission to be launched in 2014 and a second in 2016. An Orbiter will collect the samples from Mars Ascent Vehicles and bring them back to Earth. Options which would significantly increase the rate of mission launch and/or accelerate the schedule of exploration are under study, including launching the first sample return mission. Technology development for advanced capabilities such as miniaturized surface science instruments and deep drilling to several hundred feet will also be carried out in this period. For more about Subsurface Exploration, click here.

The program envisions significant international participation, particularly by France and Italy . In cooperation with NASA, the French and Italian space agencies plan to conduct collaborative scientific orbital and surface investigations and to make other major contributions to sample collection/return systems, telecommunications assets and launch services. Other nations also have expressed interest in participating in  the program.

Questions to think about:

• Bringing Mars samples back to Earth has many risks associated with it. How would you educate the public about those risks?
• Do you think we should bring samples to Earth or to the International Space Station for study? Why or why not?
• What kinds of design issues might be facing the Mars plane engineers? How would the very thin air of Mars affect an airplane's ability to fly?

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