[meteorite-list] NASA Announces Mars 2020 Rover Payload to Explore the Red Planet as Never Before

[Ron Baalke]

July 31, 2014

NASA Announces Mars 2020 Rover Payload to Explore the Red Planet as Never Before

The next rover NASA will send to Mars in 2020 will carry seven 
carefully-selected instruments to conduct unprecedented science and 
exploration technology investigations on the Red Planet.

NASA announced the selected Mars 2020 rover instruments Thursday at the 
agency's headquarters in Washington. Managers made the selections out 
of 58 proposals received in January from researchers and engineers worldwide. 
Proposals received were twice the usual number submitted for instrument 
competitions in the recent past. This is an indicator of the extraordinary 
interest by the science community in the exploration of the Mars. The 
selected proposals have a total value of approximately $130 million for 
development of the instruments.

The Mars 2020 mission will be based on the design of the highly successful 
Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, which landed almost two years 
ago, and currently is operating on Mars. The new rover will carry more 
sophisticated, upgraded hardware and new instruments to conduct geological 
assessments of the rover's landing site, determine the potential habitability 
of the environment, and directly search for signs of ancient Martian life.

"Today we take another important step on our journey to Mars," said NASA 
Administrator Charles Bolden. "While getting to and landing on Mars is 
hard, Curiosity was an iconic example of how our robotic scientific explorers 
are paving the way for humans to pioneer Mars and beyond. Mars exploration 
will be this generation's legacy, and the Mars 2020 rover will be another 
critical step on humans' journey to the Red Planet."

Scientists will use the Mars 2020 rover to identify and select a collection 
of rock and soil samples that will be stored for potential return to Earth 
by a future mission. The Mars 2020 mission is responsive to the science 
objectives recommended by the National Research Council's 2011 Planetary 
Science Decadal Survey.

"The Mars 2020 rover, with these new advanced scientific instruments, 
including those from our international partners, holds the promise to 
unlock more mysteries of Mars' past as revealed in the geological record,"
said John Grunsfeld astronaut, and associate administrator of NASA's Science 
Mission Directorate in Washington. "This mission will further our search 
for life in the universe and also offer opportunities to advance new capabilities 
in exploration technology."

The Mars 2020 rover also will help advance our knowledge of how future 
human explorers could use natural resources available on the surface of 
the Red Planet. An ability to live off the Martian land would transform 
future exploration of the planet. Designers of future human expeditions 
can use this mission to understand the hazards posed by Martian dust and 
demonstrate technology to process carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to 
produce oxygen. These experiments will help engineers learn how to use 
Martian resources to produce oxygen for human respiration and potentially 
oxidizer for rocket fuel.

"The 2020 rover will help answer questions about the Martian environment 
that astronauts will face and test technologies they need before landing 
on, exploring and returning from the Red Planet," said William Gerstenmaier, 
associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission 
Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Mars has resources needed 
to help sustain life, which can reduce the amount of supplies that human 
missions will need to carry. Better understanding the Martian dust and 
weather will be valuable data for planning human Mars missions. Testing 
ways to extract these resources and understand the environment will help 
make the pioneering of Mars feasible."

The selected payload proposals are:

* Mastcam-Z, an advanced camera system with panoramic and stereoscopic 
imaging capability with the ability to zoom. The instrument also will 
determine mineralogy of the Martian surface and assist with rover operations. 
The principal investigator is James Bell, Arizona State University in 
Phoenix.

* SuperCam, an instrument that can provide imaging, chemical composition 
analysis, and mineralogy. The instrument will also be able to detect the 
presence of organic compounds in rocks and regolith from a distance. The 
principal investigator is Roger Wiens, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 
Los Alamos, New Mexico. This instrument also has a significant contribution 
from the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales,Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique 
et Planetologie (CNES/IRAP) France.

* Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL), an X-ray fluorescence 
spectrometer that will also contain an imager with high resolution to 
determine the fine scale elemental composition of Martian surface materials. 
PIXL will provide capabilities that permit more detailed detection and 
analysis of chemical elements than ever before. The principal investigator 
is Abigail Allwood, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, 
California.

* Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics 
and Chemicals (SHERLOC), a spectrometer that will provide fine-scale imaging 
and uses an ultraviolet (UV) laser to determine fine-scale mineralogy 
and detect organic compounds. SHERLOC will be the first UV Raman spectrometer 
to fly to the surface of Mars and will provide complementary measurements 
with other instruments in the payload. The principal investigator is Luther 
Beegle, JPL.

* The Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE), an exploration technology investigation 
that will produce oxygen from Martian atmospheric carbon dioxide. The 
principal investigator is Michael Hecht, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 
Cambridge, Massachusetts.

* Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA), a set of sensors that will 
provide measurements of temperature, wind speed and direction, pressure, 
relative humidity and dust size and shape. The principal investigator 
is Jose Rodriguez-Manfredi, Centro de Astrobiologia, Instituto Nacional 
de Tecnica Aeroespacial, Spain.

* The Radar Imager for Mars' Subsurface Exploration (RIMFAX), a ground-penetrating 
radar that will provide centimeter-scale resolution of the geologic structure 
of the subsurface. The principal investigator is Svein-Erik Hamran, Forsvarets 
Forskning Institute, Norway.

"We are excited that NASA's Space Technology Program is partnered with 
Human Exploration and the Mars 2020 Rover Team to demonstrate our abilities 
to harvest the Mars atmosphere and convert its abundant carbon dioxide 
to pure oxygen'" said James Reuther, deputy associate administrator for 
programs for the Space Technology Mission Directorate. "This technology 
demonstration will pave the way for more affordable human missions to 
Mars where oxygen is needed for life support and rocket propulsion."

Instruments developed from the selected proposals will be placed on a 
rover similar to Curiosity, which has been exploring Mars since 2012. 
Using a proven landing system and rover chassis design to deliver these 
new experiments to Mars will ensure mission costs and risks are minimized 
as much as possible, while still delivering a highly capable rover.

Curiosity recently completed a Martian year on the surface -- 687 Earth 
days -- having accomplished the mission's main goal of determining whether 
Mars once offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.

The Mars 2020 rover is part the agency's Mars Exploration Program, which 
includes the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers, the Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance 
Orbiter spacecraft currently orbiting the planet, and the MAVEN orbiter, 
which is set to arrive at the Red Planet in September and will study the 
Martian upper atmosphere.

In 2016, a Mars lander mission called InSight will launch to take the 
first look into the deep interior of Mars. The agency also is participating 
in the European Space Agency's (ESA's) 2016 and 2018 ExoMars missions, 
including providing "Electra" telecommunication radios to ESA's 2016 orbiter 
and a critical element of the astrobiology instrument on the 2018 ExoMars 
rover.

NASA's Mars Exploration Program seeks to characterize and understand Mars 
as a dynamic system, including its present and past environment, climate 
cycles, geology and biological potential. In parallel, NASA is developing 
the human spaceflight capabilities needed for future round-trip missions 
to Mars.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will build and manage operations of the 
Mars 2020 rover for the NASA Science Mission Directorate at the agency's 
headquarters in Washington.

For more information about NASA's Mars programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mars

-end-

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov