Energy & Environment
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11 December 2008
NASA Delays Launch of Mars Science Laboratory Until 2011
By Cheryl Pellerin
Staff Writer
Washington — The largest and most capable rover ever designed to look for microbial life — past or present — on the Red Planet will begin its interplanetary mission in 2011 rather than 2009 because of manufacturing problems and time needed to test the complex system before launch.
The Mars Science Laboratory will use new technologies to adjust its flight while descending through the Martian atmosphere and to set the rover on the surface by lowering it on a tether from a hovering descent stage. Advanced research instruments make up a science payload 10 times the mass of instruments on NASA's Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers.
Rigorous testing of components and systems is essential to developing such a complex mission and preparing it for launch. Tests during the middle phases of development resulted in decisions to re-engineer key parts of the spacecraft.
“Because of a rather extensive backlog of other work, we will not be ready to launch by the hoped-for date next year,” NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said during a December 4 briefing.
“Trying for ‘09 would require us to assume too much risk, more than I think is appropriate for a flagship mission like the Mars Science Laboratory,” he added. “If we could delay the launch for a few months that would probably take care of it. But launch opportunities for Mars come every 26 months, so we either go in 2009 or 2011.”
The Mars Science Lab is engineered to drive longer distances over rougher terrain than previous rovers, and it will use a new surface propulsion system. (See “Data from Rovers, Spacecraft Set Stage for More Mars Exploration.”)
DELAYS AND OPPORTUNITIES
Moving the launch to 2011 will cost the agency $400 million over five years (2010-2014), said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA headquarters, bringing the total mission cost to about $2.3 billion. NASA’s initial financial commitment to the mission in August 2006 was $1.63 billion.
“We don’t think we’ll have to cancel any programs in 2010 or 2011 [as a result of the Mars Science Lab delay],” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters, “but there probably will have to be some schedule delays in [other] programs.”
The agency will work with the NASA Advisory Council’s Planetary Science Subcommittee to determine available options, Weiler said, adding that the growing complexity and expense of Mars missions has created an opportunity.
A conversation in July between Weiler and his counterpart at the European Space Agency (ESA), Director of Science David Southwood, has led to an agreement between NASA and ESA to work together on future missions to the Red Planet — one Mars program for the Earth, Weiler said.
“In the future,” he added, “NASA and ESA are going to work together to come up with a European-U.S. Mars architecture. Missions won’t be NASA missions, they won’t be ESA missions, they will be joint missions.”
 A version of the new Mars rover conquers boulders in JPL’s Mars yard in 2007. ROVING MARS
When the Mars Science Lab finally gets to Mars, it will analyze dozens of samples scooped from the soil and cored from rocks, exploring with greater range than any previous Mars rover.
The mobile lab will be about twice as long (2.8 meters) and four times as heavy as Spirit and Opportunity, and it has inherited from them some design elements — six-wheel drive, a special suspension system and cameras mounted on a mast to help the Earth-bound mission team choose exploration targets and driving routes.
Unlike earlier rovers, Mars Science Lab will carry equipment to gather samples of rocks and soil, crush them and distribute them to onboard test chambers inside analytical instruments.
The mission’s science goal is to assess whether the landing area — still to be determined — ever had or still has environmental conditions favorable to microbial life. Investigations will include:
• Detecting and identifying organic carbon compounds,
• Taking inventory of key building blocks of life,
• Identifying features that may represent effects of biological processes,
• Examining rocks and soils at and near the surface to interpret the processes that formed and modified them,
• Assessing how Mars' atmosphere has changed over billions of years, and
• Determining distribution and cycles of water and carbon dioxide in frozen, liquid or gaseous form.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California manages the Mars Science Lab for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Spain's Ministry of Education and Science is providing a rover environmental monitoring station to measure atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, winds and ultraviolet radiation levels. The team for this investigation includes the Finnish Meteorological Institute.
Russia's Federal Space Agency is providing an instrument to measure subsurface hydrogen up to 1 meter below the surface. Detecting hydrogen may indicate the presence of water in the form of ice or bound in minerals.
More information about the Mars Science Laboratory is available at the NASA Web site.
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