NASA has announced that its next Mars rover will launch in 2020 and will search for evidence of past life on the Red Planet by returning samples to Earth, BBC News reported.
The 2020 rover will be a twin of sorts to the one that is currently roaming Mars, Curiosity, as it will use some of its recycled parts and will have a similar structure. The new rover ($1.5 billion) will be much cheaper to build than curiosity was ($2.5 billion).
NASA commissioned the definition team to design the rover and its journey. The team said, given what they already know about the planet's surface, a search mission would be extremely difficult.
"That's a darn hard measurement to make and a darn hard measurement to convince the skeptical science community, because scientists are naturally skeptical," said Jack Mustard, team chair and professor of geological sciences at Brown University.
However, it will not be impossible because Curiosity has already found evidence that water and life had existed on Mars.
"The science definition team wrestled with this question, but the feeling was, on the basis of the evidence we have today," Mustard said. "The most logical steps forward were to look for the ancient forms of life that would be preserved within the rock record."
To stay under their $1.5 billion budget, the 2020 rover will be nearly identical to Curiosity with the only major difference being the instrument suite. The team said the machine should be capable of visual, chemical and mineralogical analysis down to microscopic scale. NASA will begin fielding ideas for the instrument suite later this year.
The key capability for the rover, the team said, is that it will be able to collect, catch and package samples and return them to Earth. As for how the rover will do so is also up for discussion.
"I wouldn't rule out that human explorers will go and retrieve the cache," NASA's science director John Grunsfeld told reporters. "I wouldn't rule out that human explorers will go and retrieve the cache."
Grunsfeld said the goal for this achievement would be with the 2020 launch or with the 2030 launch.
"Of course, [the scientists] would bring back many more samples as well. But that's all forward work," he said. "That's the eventual goal - to put astrobiologists and planetary scientists on the surface Mars."
