NASA Group Sets Sights on Mars Mission

Contending that if the United States does not move now it will be tantamount to conceding Mars to the Soviets, a team of top-level NASA managers unveiled their goal Tuesday of sending a sophisticated, unmanned spacecraft to Mars that would roam the surface of the Red Planet for up to a year, collect rocks and other samples and then send them back to Earth.

The Mars Rover and Sample Return mission, as it is called, is one of several ambitious projects being considered by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and its supporters within the space agency are moving into the public sector now for the first time, convinced that the time is right.

They outlined their proposal Tuesday before about 200 representatives from the aerospace industry, which is being asked to bid on four contracts to define various components of the mission.

Question of Support

Several businessmen who attended the session at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena questioned whether NASA could win congressional support to launch a major new project at a time when it is having trouble funding existing programs, but they were reminded repeatedly that the space race is alive and international competition should help move the Mars project along.

“This is a mission that has to happen,” Geoffrey Briggs, head of NASA’s Solar System Exploration Division, told the aerospace representatives. “If we don’t move now, we will be left behind.”

“It’s clearly going to be done,” added Robert Parks, JPL deputy director. “The question is when and by whom.”

Recently, scientists from the Soviet Union told the 18th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston that they were planning their own mission to Mars around the turn of the century with a land rover that would collect and then send samples back to Earth. That is precisely the same mission and the same time frame that NASA officials are shooting for.

In addition, the Soviets have announced plans to launch a spacecraft to Mars next year. The spacecraft will send probes to one of Mar’s moons as part of a mission that has left NASA scientists more than a little envious.

Ironically, the United States, which led the world in the exploration of Mars with its successful Viking program, is stumbling in its efforts to launch a modest probe to study the atmosphere of Mars. The probe was to have blasted off in a space shuttle in 1990, but the launch has been delayed to 1992.

Nonetheless, the time is ripe for Mars buffs to move forward, several NASA executives said during the JPL meeting, because the United States has lost the initiative in planetary research--a field it once had all to itself--and the space agency needs a lift.

“NASA is not exactly at the zenith of its activities at the moment,” Briggs said. “Nor is the planetary program.”

‘Got to Get Moving’

“We either do it now or after the Soviets do it,” he added in an interview. “NASA has got to get moving again.”

Although the mission to Mars has not yet even been endorsed by NASA Administrator James Fletcher, much less the White House or Congress, it is viewed widely within the space agency as one way of regaining U.S. preeminence in space exploration on the heels of the Challenger disaster. It has strong support across the country from various sectors, including the National Academy of Sciences, which recommended it as long ago as the mid-1970s, and Pasadena’s Planetary Society, a grass-roots organization that has pushed hard for several years for a mission to Mars.

The four contracts to be awarded by NASA, two for $250,000 and two for $350,000, are to determine what would be needed in the rover and spacecraft to carry out the project. Each contract, to be awarded this September, will call for a 10-month study.

JPL will be NASA’s lead center on the project, in partnership with Houston’s Johnson Space Center.

Donald Rea of JPL, manager of the rover study, said he hopes that NASA will be ready to award contracts to begin construction in 1993, with a launch date sometime in 1998. Since the round trip could take nearly three years, including one year for the rover to collect samples over a wide area of Mars’ surface, the craft would not return to Earth until early in the next century.

No cost estimates have been made, but Briggs said he would expect the project to run at least $3 billion.

Unacceptable Alternatives

It would be possible to scale back the proposal, eliminating either the rover or the sample return, but scientists involved in the project say those alternatives are not acceptable.

“You can’t just go to the planet and grab something that’s near the spacecraft,” said Michael Carr of the U.S. Geological Survey, chairman of the project’s science committee. “You might land on a sand hill. We need a rover.”

Similarly, samples from Mars could allow scientists to piece together the history of the planet, which Carr called a “geological paradise” because of its rich variety in geological structures, including deep canyons, towering mountains and active volcanoes.

“We’ve got to get samples back,” Carr said. “That’s the only way to address the major questions. We can’t do it from pictures.”

One area that is of vital concern is whether Mars ever supported any sort of life. Although scientists generally believe there is no life on the planet now, that may not have always been the case, Carr said.

“Life may have gotten started on Mars, but could not sustain itself,” he said.

Reveal History

Thus it will be necessary for the rover to be able to bore below the surface, tapping samples that would reveal the history of the planet, if scientists are to be able to answer the question of whether Mars has ever had any form of primitive life.

If, for example, they find amino acids, the basic building blocks of life, in the permafrost below the surface, there would be reason to believe that life had at least tried to start. Previous missions to Mars included spacecraft that landed on its surface and sent back photos, but they could not send back samples.

At this point, NASA is not even sure what the rover should look like. Some thought has been given to a “walking” rover, which might be able to climb up the sandy hills of Mars more easily than a wheeled vehicle, but that design could prove too complex. The probable design, according to NASA engineers, is sort of an elaborate dune buggy, loaded with cameras, drilling equipment and robotic arms.

According to a preliminary study by NASA headquarters, the rover would have to be able to charge along at about half a mile a day to carry out its mission. It would also need to be capable of “surmounting obstacles” four to five feet tall and “climbing grades of up to 35% on loose sand.”

Fully Automated

It would be required to roam at least 60 miles from the spacecraft, and it would need to be able “to accommodate surprises in the terrain,” one engineer said. One question to be answered is whether the rover should be fully automated or controlled remotely from Earth.

Samples collected by the rover would have to be returned to the spacecraft and packed away so that their scientific integrity would not be jeopardized.

After completing its mission, the spacecraft would blast off from Mars and return to a near-Earth orbit, where it would link up with NASA’s space station, which is supposed to be operational in the mid-1990s. The samples would be quarantined at the station until scientists could be sure that they contained no materials that might be harmful on Earth.

The rover, however, would be left on Mars, collecting data that could be transmitted back to Earth as long as its systems survived.