[meteorite-list] NASA Administrator Signs Agreements to Advance Agency's Journey to Mars

[Ron Baalke]

June 16, 2015

NASA Administrator Signs Agreements to Advance Agency's Journey to Mars

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden signed agreements with two European 
partners to advance Mars exploration and our journey to the Red Planet during 
meetings Tuesday at the Paris Air Show.

Bolden and Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of the French space agency, Centre 
National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), signed an agreement for France to 
provide the mast for the SuperCam component of NASA's Mars 2020 rover.

In terms of design, SuperCam is similar to the ChemCam on the Curiosity 
rover, which is currently traversing the surface of Mars. ChemCam analyzes 
rocks and soil to determine their compositions and identify samples for 
analysis by other instruments onboard Curiosity. SuperCam, however, will have 
significantly enhanced capabilities, equipped with four scientific 
instruments that will allow it to look for biosignatures -- indicators of 
the past presence of life -- and identify samples for collection and possible 
return to Earth.

"I'm delighted that our long time partners CNES will join us on the next 
step in our journey to Mars," Bolden said, "We're paving the way for 
humans to visit the Red Planet and working to answer one of the key questions 
for all humanity: has there ever been life elsewhere?"

Bolden also signed an agreement that extends cooperation with Spain on the 
Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, the NASA InSight mission that will 
launch next year to study the core of Mars, and the Mars 2020 rover. Bolden 
and Francisco Marin Perez, director general of the Center for the 
Development of Industrial Technology of Spain (CDTI), and Ignacio Azqueta 
Ortiz, director general of the National Institute for Aerospace Technology of 
Spain (INTA) finalized the agreement.

The NASA-CDTI-INTA agreement continues operation and coordination of the 
Remote Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) instrument suite and the High 
Gain Antenna (HGA) subsystem currently on the Curiosity rover. REMS provides 
important data on Mars' weather, while the HGA provides an important 
communications link for transmitting data from the mission. Spain will 
provide the HGA subsytem for the Mars 2020 rover, as well. For the InSight 
lander, Spain will provide a suite of sensors called Temperature and Wind on 
InSight (TWINS).

Through other agreements in development, Spain also will equip the Mars 2020 
rover with a Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) instrument suite and 
calibration targets for the SuperCam.

"NASA is proud to continue our strong collaboration with Spain that is 
already producing amazing results on Mars,' Bolden said. "We look forward 
to this next phase of our partnership and a wealth of data about Mars, the 
next destination for human exploration."

For more information about NASA's Journey to Mars, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mars

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

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