NASA lays out vision for robotic Mars exploration

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https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-lays-out-vision-robotic-mars-exploration

By Paul Voosen, Science. 

Excerpt: Rover by rover, NASA’s exploration of Mars is building to an expensive climax: a multibillion-dollar mission later this decade to collect the rock samples currently being gathered by the Perseverance rover and return them to Earth. But then what? NASA ...envisions a series of lower cost Mars missions, costing up to $300 million, at every 2-year launch window. The program could begin as soon as 2030, said Eric Ianson, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, in a presentation today to the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. ...planetary scientists have been investigating what cheaper missions to Mars might look like. In 2018, Mars Cube One, a pair of small spacecraft, flew along with the InSight lander, successfully relaying its signal to Earth as they flew past the planet. And the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars, which landed with Perseverance, is about to take off on its 49th flight—44 more flights than planned. ...Scientific payloads could also be added to non-NASA spacecraft going to the planet, Ianson said. ...A model for that concept is NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, which is paying commercial providers to carry payloads to the Moon’s surface.... See also New York Times article A Big Rover Aims to Be Like ‘U.P.S. for the Moon’.

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