New mars rover by NASA in 2020

The next robotic rover to explore Mars in 2020 should scour the surface of the red planet more closely than ever for signs of past life, aNasa science team said Tuesday.The US space agency's science definition team (SDT) released a 154-page document containing its proposals for the next Mars rover, after five months of work.The mission would use microscopic analysis for the first time, collect the first rock samples for possible return to Earth and test ways to use natural resources on site for a future human trip, it said. The Mars 2020 mission would build on the work being done by Nasa's Curiosity rover, which has been exploring the red planet since August 2012 and has already found evidence of potentially habitable environments. The mission would present "a major step toward seeking signs of life," said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at Nasa headquarters. The next step is for Nasa to analyze the recommendations and issue a call for scientific instruments, which could include higher resolution imaging devices, microscopes, fine scale minerology, chemistry and organic carbon detection tools to scan for biosignatures on the surface of Mars. "To combine this suite of instruments would be incredibly powerful," said Jack Mustard, SDT chair and professor of geological sciences at Brown University. The rover would collect about 31 samples that might someday be returned to Earth, representing "a legacy for understanding the development of habitability on the planet," he told reporters. The US space agency has not yet devised the technology to bring the cache back to Earth without disturbing its contents, and no plans have been set for any potential sample-return. The next Nasa mission to Mars is a November launch of MAVEN, an orbiter that will study how Mars interacted with the solar wind and lost its atmosphere. The European Space Agency will follow in 2018 with its ExoMars rover. ISRO is planning its Mars roverr in the end of this year. John Grunsfeld, Nasa's associate administrator for science, said the 2020 Mars rover would get the US space agency to the next step in the "quest to answer the grand questions," before a planned human mission in the 2030s. "Do we see any evidence of past life in those habitable environments?" he said, alluding to the aims of the future missions. The rover, which will visit the planet in 2020, is seen as a major step towards meeting President Barack Obama's challenge to send humans to Mars within 30 years. It will drill into rocks and soil, collecting up to 31 samples that will be stored in a cache. Scientists hope to send another spacecraft to pick up the samples, which will be examined in laboratories back on Earth to determine whether Martian dust poses a hazard to human health. The rover will also help designers of future manned missions invent ways of collecting carbon dioxide, which could be used to produce oxygen and rocket fuel. Jim Green, director of Nasa's planetary science division, said: "The Mars 2020 mission will provide a unique capability to address the major questions of habitability and life in the solar system."  By keeping the design the same, scientists hope to minimise the costs and risks involved in flying to the planet. Curiosity has already found evidence that water once flowed on Mars and Nasa says searching for signs of past life is the "next logical step". Jack Mustard, chairman of the science definition team, said: "The Mars 2020 mission concept does not presume that life ever existed on Mars. "However, given the recent Curiosity findings, past Martian life seems possible, and we should begin the difficult endeavour of seeking the signs of life. "No matter what we learn, we would make significant progress in understanding the circumstances of early life existing on Earth and the possibilities of extra-terrestrial life." NASA's next Mars rover should hunt for signs of past Red Planet life and collect samples for eventual return to Earth, a team of mission planners has determined. The new Mars rover — slated to launch in 2020 — should explore a site that once was habitable, make its own observations and snag material for scientists here on Earth to study in unprecedented detail at some point in the future, according to a new report compiled by the mission's "science definition team" (SDT). For example, the new robot will use a similar chassis and "sky crane" landing system, NASA officials have said. But the 2020 rover will take the science to a whole new level. "The 2020 rover as proposed by the Science Definition Team would carry a different and more advanced set of science instruments than Curiosity carries, its drill would extract cores rather than blended powder from rocks and it would collect and package samples for possible future return to Earth," NASA officials wrote today in an FAQ about the SDT's report. "The capability for examining the mineralogic composition of samples at microscopic scale would be unprecedented for a mission to Mars," NASA officials wrote in the FAQ. "The search for potential signs of past life could use assessments of textures, shapes, mineralogy, organic-matter content, and possibly elemental chemistry at the scale of individual grains within a sample."The rover would also gather and store samples for potential return to Earth by a future mission (the timing and details of which are yet to be determined). Sample-return is viewed by most scientists as the best way to look for signs of Red Planet life. The new rover's landing site has not been selected yet, officials said, and its power source similarly has not been confirmed. Curiosity is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), which converts the heat generated by radioactive decay into electricity. The 2020 rover may follow suit, but it's also possible that it could run on solar power, like NASA's smaller Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which landed on Mars in 2004. "No final decision on a power source for the 2020 rover would be made until the mission completes a review through the National Environmental Policy Act process, which considers the environmental impacts of launching and conducting the mission," NASA officials wrote in the FAQ. Curiosity's mission cost a total of $2.5 billion. The 2020 rover is expected to be significantly cheaper, with a total price tag estimated at around $1.5 billion.The new 2020 rover mission was announced this past December, and the SDT was formed in January.