Space officials in the United States and Europe are planning an ambitious dual-rover mission that could start collecting Martian soil samples in 2018 to be picked up by a subsequent mission and returned to Earth in the 2020s. The costly mission would blast off on an Atlas 5 rocket in 2018 and land two rovers on Mars with a single “sky crane” descent system that will be tested for the first time at the Red Planet in August 2012. It would be the first time two rovers will be delivered to the same landing site on Mars. The European Space Agency’s ExoMars rover and a $2 billion NASA Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Cacher mission are the leading candidates for the tandem project.
March 25th, 2003
European Space Agency Plans Mars Mission
The European Space Agency will send an unmanned mission to Mars in 2009 to put a roving vehicle on the planet to search for evidence of life, the agency said Tuesday. The ESA hopes the mission, known as ExoMars, also will provide new insight into the planet’s surface and atmosphere. The trip is part of ESA’s preparation for eventual manned missions to Mars.