Donald Savage
Headquarters, Washington, DC                 October 26, 2000
(Phone:  202/358-1547)

RELEASE:  00-171

NASA OUTLINES MARS EXPLORATION PROGRAM FOR NEXT TWO DECADES

     By means of orbiters, landers, rovers and sample return 
missions, NASA's revamped campaign to explore Mars, announced 
today, is poised to unravel the secrets of the Red Planet 's past 
environments, the history of its rocks, the many roles of water 
and, possibly, evidence of past or present life. 

Six major missions are planned in this decade as part of a 
scientific tapestry that will weave a tale of new understanding of 
Earth's sometimes enigmatic and surprising neighbor. 

The missions are part of a long-term Mars exploration program 
which has been developed over the past six months. The new program 
incorporates the lessons learned from previous mission successes 
and failures, and builds on scientific discoveries from past 
missions. The NASA-led effort to define the program well into the 
next decade focused on the science goals, management strategies, 
technology development and resource availability in an effort to 
design and implement missions which would be successful and 
provide a balanced program of discoveries. International 
participation, especially from Italy and France, will add 
significantly to the plan. The next step will be an 18-month 
programmatic systems engineering study to refine the costs and 
technology needs.

In addition to the previously announced 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter 
mission and the twin Mars Exploration Rovers in 2003, NASA plans 
to launch a powerful scientific orbiter in 2005. This mission, the 
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, will focus on analyzing the surface 
at new scales in an effort to follow the tantalizing hints of 
water from the Mars Global Surveyor images and to bridge the gap 
between surface observations and measurements from orbit. For 
example, the Reconnaissance Orbiter will measure thousands of 
Martian landscapes at 8-to-12-inch (20-to-30-cm) resolution, good 
enough to observe rocks the size of beach balls. 

NASA proposes to develop and to launch a long-range, long-duration 
mobile science laboratory that will be a major leap in surface 
measurements and pave the way for a future sample return mission. 
NASA is studying options to launch this mobile science labroatory 
mission as early as 2007. This capability will also demonstrate 
the technology for accurate landing and hazard avoidance in order 
to reach what may be very promising but difficult-to-reach 
scientific sites.

NASA also proposes to create a new line of small "Scout" missions 
which would be selected from proposals from the science community, 
and might involve airborne vehicles or small landers, as an 
investigation platform. Exciting new vistas could be opened up by 
this approach either through the airborne scale of observation or 
by increasing the number of sites visited. The first Scout mission 
launch is planned for 2007.

In the second decade, NASA plans additional science orbiters, 
rovers and landers, and the first mission to return the most 
promising Martian samples to Earth. Current plans call for the 
first sample return mission to be launched in 2014 and a second in 
2016. Options which would significantly increase the rate of 
mission launch and/or accelerate the schedule of exploration are 
under study, including launching the first sample return mission 
as early as 2011. Technology development for advanced capabilities 
such as miniaturized surface science instruments and deep drilling 
to several hundred feet will also be carried out in this period. 

Mars missions can be launched every 26 months during advantageous 
alignments -- called launch opportunities -- of the Earth and 
Mars, which facilitate the minimum amount of fuel needed to make 
the long trip.

The agency's Mars Exploration Program envisions significant 
international participation, particularly by France and Italy. In 
cooperation with NASA, the French and Italian Space Agencies plan 
to conduct collaborative scientific orbital and surface 
investigations and to make other major contributions to sample 
collection/return systems, telecommunications assets and launch 
services. Other nations also have expressed interest in 
participating in the program.

"We have developed a campaign to explore Mars unparalleled in the 
history of space exploration. It will change and adapt over time 
in response to what we find with each mission. It's meant to be a 
robust, flexible, long-term program that will give us the highest 
chances for success," said Scott Hubbard, Mars Program Director at 
NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. "We're moving from the early 
era of global mapping and limited surface exploration to a much 
more intensive approach. We will establish a sustained presence in 
orbit around Mars and on the surface with long-duration 
exploration of some of the most scientifically promising and 
intriguing places on the planet."

"The scientific strategy developed for the new program is that of 
first seeking the most compelling places from above, before moving 
to the surface to investigate Mars," said Dr. Jim Garvin, NASA 
Mars Exploration Program Scientist at Headquarters. "The new 
program offers opportunities for competitively selected 
instruments and investigations at every step, and endeavors to 
keep the public informed on each mission via higher bandwidth 
telecommunication on the web."

"NASA's new Mars Exploration Program may well prove to be a 
watershed in the history of Mars exploration," said Dr. Ed Weiler, 
NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Science. "With this new 
strategy, we're going to dig deep into the details of Mars' 
mineralogy, geology and climate history in a way we've never been 
able to do before. We also plan to 'follow the water' so that in 
the not-to-distant future we may finally know the answers to the 
most far-reaching questions about the Red Planet we humans have 
asked over the generations: Did life ever arise there, and does 
life exist there now?"