That report card emerging from a January 31-February 1 review will gauge the overall health of the project. Some senior officials close to the effort favor an unpopular and now minority view of dropping one rover to relieve schedule pressures. Other Mars spacecraft experts see trouble down the road in operating two Mars rovers at once. Furthermore, how to utilize an already over subscribed Deep Space Network of radio dishes to work a rover duo appears loaded with headaches. Between January 24-26 at NASA AMES, Mountain View, California NASA will hold the first landing site workshop for the twin 2003 Mars exploration rovers.
Qualified researchers can attend and provide their input.
While still early in development, it appears there could be at least minor changes to the landing system's parachute, solid rocket braking motors or possibly the airbags themselves to accommodate the heavier payload weight, and weight margin, for the 2003 mission. Officials plan to firm up the baseline in January when a project review is scheduled. Mars Rover NASA will send a second rover to Mars in 2003 that is identical to the one it had previously decided to send to the Red Planet that year, the space agency announced Thursday. The U.S. space agency said it would launch the two golf cart-sized rovers separately in 2003. While scientists have yet to choose the precise landing sites, they said one might go to a safe, flat area while the second might take on riskier, more aggressive terrain.