what is planned next for Mars?

I get the feeling that NASA's plans for Mars exploration are in flux. It seemed like NASA/ESA was planning to send another rover in 2018 to gather samples that might later be returned to Earth, but now NASA isn't sure they can afford the 2018 mission so ESA is considering partnering with Russia?

Can anybody tell me what is going on and what is causing the budget problems?

The Dollar decline and EU collapse maybe ?

reply to post by cloudyday


You might enjoy this thread:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Both the US and EU are trillions in the hole plus we are still spending more than we are taking in.
Space budgets are one of the first slashed. Another rover in Mars does nothing to pay for grandma's medical bills.

reply to post by cloudyday


Hopefully nothing regarding humans is planned for Mars. We cant live peacefully together here on Earth never mind ruining another planet.

Originally posted by Lee78
reply to post by cloudyday

 

Hopefully nothing regarding humans is planned for Mars. We cant live peacefully together here on Earth never mind ruining another planet.

Oh? Mars is a dead wasteland. What could we possibly do to ruin it?

O.k. here are a couple of quotes and links. It sounds like the ESA ExoMars rover is not in jeopardy but the NASA Mars 2018 rover is already canceled? I suppose NASA has no money to fulfill their commitments to ESA because they must find $2 billion or more per year to fund the SLS rocket? Maybe I'm being pessimistic, but I think SLS will be even more expensive and behind schedule than Ares.

ExoMars will deploy a Rover carrying a comprehensive suite of analytical instruments dedicated to exobiology and geology research: the Pasteur payload. The Rover will travel several kilometres searching for traces of past and present signs of life, collecting and analysing samples from within surface rocks and from the subsurface, down to a depth of 2 metres.

The ExoMars Rover mission will be complemented by the Humboldt payload, to be accommodated on the Lander. Following the Rover's egress, the Humboldt station will be activated to study the environment and measure planetary geophysics parameters important for understanding Mars’s evolution and habitability.

ExoMars

The Mars 2018 Mission is a proposed NASA Mars rover mission that would launch in 2018, and carry with it the European Space Agency's (ESA's) ExoMars rover. The rovers would land together on the surface of Mars in 2019. They would use a "sky crane" landing system similar to that used for the Curiosity rover. The NASA rover is intended to be designed as a solar-powered rover.

The goal of the proposed NASA rover would be to collect and cache samples of interest for a potential return to Earth by a future mission. It will study rocks to look for scientifically exciting samples, including those that might have the potential to have preserved signs of past life on Mars. It would be designed to collect a few dozen such samples from several locations near its landing site. To collect the rock samples, the rover would use coring tools. Once the samples are collected and sealed in canisters, the rover would drive to a safe location and place the canisters for possible later pick-up by a future mission with a "fetch" rover.

Mars 2018

NASA had previously offered to pay for an Atlas 5 launch that would send ESA’s entry, descent and landing demonstrator and data relay satellite — equipped with a methane-sniffing sensor and other science instruments — to Mars in 2016.

Under the original plan, that mission was to be followed two years later by a NASA-led campaign that would deliver a NASA rover and an ESA rover to drill and collect soil samples on the Martian surface.

In April the U.S. space agency said budget cutbacks were threatening funding for ExoMars. After months of back and forth between the two agencies, during which NASA pulled the plug on its 2018 rover, NASA said in September it could not commit to launching the 2016 leg of the mission. As a result, ESA has turned to Roscosmos for possible launch of its planned Mars orbiter in the 2016 window.

During the meeting, Russia agreed at least in principle to provide a Proton rocket for the 2016 launch, pending resolution of several outstanding issues, including space for Russian instruments or other technologies aboard the mission as well as rights to data collected by a proposed ESA-NASA ExoMars rover that could launch in 2018, Bonacina says.

ExoMars redesign

reply to post by TsukiLunar

Oh? Mars is a dead wasteland. What could we possibly do to ruin it?

Don't worry, we will find a way....we are so good at it.


.

Originally posted by TsukiLunar

Originally posted by Lee78
reply to post by cloudyday

 

Hopefully nothing regarding humans is planned for Mars. We cant live peacefully together here on Earth never mind ruining another planet.

Oh? Mars is a dead wasteland. What could we possibly do to ruin it?

Not so sure.... Not so sure.

Beware.

Originally posted by Arken

Originally posted by TsukiLunar

Originally posted by Lee78
reply to post by cloudyday

 

Hopefully nothing regarding humans is planned for Mars. We cant live peacefully together here on Earth never mind ruining another planet.

Oh? Mars is a dead wasteland. What could we possibly do to ruin it?

Not so sure.... Not so sure.

Beware.

Indeed