Major Paradigm Shifts Needed for NASA’s Future Mars Exploration Science Program

NASA has a new 20-year plan for robotic exploration of Mars that calls for major paradigm shifts in how the agency approaches exploration of the Red Planet. The future should focus on smaller missions, more commercial and international engagement, and defining science goals for an era of human presence on Mars. The plan does not address the Mars Sample Return program, which is organizationally separate from the rest of the agency’s robotic science Mars efforts.

Speaking at a NASA Town Hall meeting in conjunction with the American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference in Washington, D.C. last night, Eric Ianson, Deputy Director of the Planetary Science Dvision and Director for the Mars Exploration Program (MEP), explained the intensive process NASA used to develop the Mars Exploration Program Future Plan, working closely with the Mars science community. Many members of the community were present and seemed quite pleased with the outcome.

“Expanding the Horizons of Mars Science: A Plan for a Sustainable Science Program at Mars — Mars Exploration Program 2024-2044” responds to recommendations in the most recent Decadal Survey for planetary science and astrobiology from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and the 2021 NASA MEP Program Implementation Review for NASA, to develop a “comprehensive plan to consider missions, infrastructure, technology and partnerships” for Mars robotic science exploration.

The 154-page report is the result.  (Illustrations below are from the report unless otherwise specified.)

 

 

 

The key to achieving all that requires a major paradigm shift from how NASA has been executing its Mars science program all these years.

The first paradigm shift is towards lower-cost missions so more missions can be launched more frequently and more affordably.  That will enable participation by more individuals and institutions, payload innovation, the ability to respond to prior discoveries, replenishing assets and/or developing networks. “Networks that enable systems science with more coverage of Mars, more frequent observations, and complementary measurements have long been an aspiration of the Mars science community and are relevant to studying Mars the way we study Earth.”

Second is partnering with the commercial sector.  Building on NASA’s experience with public-private partnerships for the COTS commercial cargo program for the International Space Station and Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) for robotic Moon landings, “MEP anticipates a real potential to leverage commercial capabilities and economies of scale for lower-cost Mars missions.”

Third will be taking advantage of the “transformative” changes that will occur when humans begin arriving on the planet, which NASA envisions in the 2040s. The report says the plan “bridges the transition from an era of solely robotic exploration of Mars to the first human missions to Mars and an eventual sustainable human/robotic presence.”  The Mars science community is “essential in defining the future science that would benefit from the presence of humans and human-class infrastructure, as well as in characterizing potential scientific and resource regions of interest.”

Fourth is recognizing that many countries now are interested in Mars exploration with “dozens of space agencies” joining international Mars exploration working groups and “see multilateral cooperation as a means of achieving objectives affordably.”

All of that leads to three co-equal science themes to guide the next two decades:

The plan goes on to lay out a broad array of missions that could be pursued, but one key message is that they want a stable, sustainable Mars exploration program. “MEP’s traditional model of large, multi-instrument flagship missions have produced spectacular science, but they are programmatically challenging to implement” with “large spikes in funding requirements between the preliminary design phase and launch.”  They want stability, not volatility.

 

For the near-term, they want to continue to support the MEP Program of Record — the NASA missions already operating at Mars on the surface or in orbit (the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers, and three orbiters: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey, and MAVEN) and NASA’s contributions to ESA’s Rosalind Franklin mission.

MEP’s Program of Record does not include Mars Sample Return (MSR). MEP and MSR are separate organizations within the Science Mission Directorate.  MEP encompasses a broad range of Mars science objectives using orbiters, landers and rovers, compared with the very focused, complex and expensive Mars Sample Return mission that is currently being redesigned to lower costs. However, the first part of MSR — collecting the samples using the Perseverance rover already on Mars — is part of MEP.  MSR’s task is to pick up those samples and bring them back to Earth.

The future MEP architecture reflects the new paradigms spelled out in the report. At the Town Hall meeting, Ianson, who is retiring at the end of this year, and Becky McCauley Rench, a co-leader of the MEP planning team, said the goal is to send a mission to Mars at every 26-month opportunity when Mars and Earth are correctly aligned, which could be achievable using smaller, lower cost missions with commercial and international partners.

Ianson conveyed that the response from industry so far has been “quite positive.” NASA contracted with several companies for studies and MEP concluded “there really is some merit here.” Industry’s biggest question is “what’s the business case” and “I totally understand that and I think that’s what we’re trying to figure out.” One proposed idea where industry would build the hardware and NASA pays a service fee for data that comes back is “probably not a totally workable solution” and NASA will need to make some up-front investments in a public-private partnership and then pay for services, not operations.

The key to the MEP Future Plan overall is “flexibility,” Ianson stressed.

“Obviously we would love to do everything in the plan. However, that’s not realistic under challenging budget circumstances with competing priorities. It’s just not going to happen in the near term. Therefore, I personally look at this plan less as a roadmap, but more as a menu of options to choose from based on the availability of budgets and the most pressing needs to support Mars science.”  — Eric Ianson

 

This article has been updated.