NASA space-science managers and the scientists they serve want to use the newly announced Curiosity 2.0 rover to collect samples for eventual analysis on Earth.
But with U.S. federal spending teetering on the “fiscal cliff,” the space agency's White House overseers are not ready to commit to a mission that is pointless without an expensive follow-on to develop a way to get the samples back.
Instead, NASA is setting up a “science definition team” to decide how to use the proposed Curiosity-derived rover when it reaches the surface of Mars in 2020. The instruments that will ride on the big rover will be chosen in an open competition based on that team's work, starting with an announcement of opportunity next summer. Like Curiosity, the new rover will again use the “sky crane” technique to touch down.
Mars Sample Return (MSR) remains the top priority of the planetary scientists polled by the National Research Council for its latest decadal survey on the subject. A pickup committee of experts NASA pulled together after the U.S. bailed out of a joint sample-return effort with Europe last year reiterated that goal this fall. But in announcing the agency's decision to spend $1.5 billion—give or take $200 million—to launch another rover to the surface of Mars in 2020, NASA'S science chief was careful to keep his options open.
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