Mars Scientists Look to Less Expensive Missions
upstart writes:
Mars scientists look to less expensive missions - SpaceNews:
The National Academies is scheduled to release the latest decadal survey for planetary sciences April 19. The report will set priorities for planetary science and astrobiology missions for 2023 through 2032.
The previous planetary science decadal survey, released in 2011, recommended as its top priority for large, or flagship, missions a rover that could cache samples for later return to Earth. NASA ultimately implemented that recommendation as Mars 2020, with the Perseverance rover currently collecting those samples.
Agency officials, speaking at a conference on low-cost Mars mission options in Pasadena, California, in late March, acknowledged it's unlikely another flagship-class Mars mission will be the top priority of the new decadal survey. Even if it was, the expense of the ongoing Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign to return the samples Perseverance is caching makes it unlikely the agency could afford another large mission this decade.
[...] At the conference, many were pinning their hopes on smaller missions, both orbiters and landers, that could address key scientific issues. Recent studies, one by the Mars Architecture Strategy Working Group (MASWG) and another by a committee organized by Caltech's Keck Institute for Space Studies, concluded that low-cost Mars missions were both feasible and useful.
Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colorado, who chaired the MASWG study, said at the conference that there was potential for missions with a total lifecycle cost of between $100 million and $300 million. We think missions in this range have the potential to do outstanding science," he said.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.