NASA’s Mars 2020 mission will launch the Perseverance rover to Mars and will cache samples for return by a pair of future missions planned for launch in 2026 in cooperation with the European Space Agency.
NASA’s fiscal year 2021 budget proposal estimates the cost to develop the Mars 2020 mission at nearly $2.04 billion, an increase of 21.4% from the 2017 baseline estimate.
NASA planned to prioritize missions with narrow launch windows, including the Mars 2020 mission scheduled for launch in July 2020.
If launches proceed on schedule, the Mars 2020, ExoMars, China’s Mars mission, and the UAE’s Hope orbiter will reach Mars in early 2021.
The SuperCam instrument on NASA’s Mars 2020 rover will inspect rocks and soils with a camera, laser, and spectrometers to seek organic compounds related to past life.
NASA’s Mars 2020 mission is slated to launch next summer and will cache samples of Martian rocks and regolith for later collection.
There are no Mars missions on the books after the Mars 2020 rover, which is set to launch next summer.
NASA has not yet formally approved the future missions to retrieve samples collected by Mars 2020.
The Mars 2020 rover mission and the Dragonfly mission to Titan are the only upcoming NASA missions formally approved for development that will use radioisotope thermoelectric generators.
Mars 2020 is the only future NASA mission to Mars under development and is scheduled to launch in July 2020.
Under the proposed cooperation, NASA would provide a Mars lander mission with a European-built rover to retrieve Mars 2020 samples.
If both missions launch in 2026, the lander will touch down near the Mars 2020 site in 2028 and send out a rover to collect samples.
Most samples to be retrieved will be in tubes left on the ground by the Mars 2020 rover, with an option for Mars 2020 to deliver some samples directly to the lander if Mars 2020 is still functioning.
The plans call for two launches in 2026 to send spacecraft to fetch samples collected by NASA’s Mars 2020 rover and return them to Earth in 2031.
One ESA participation concept for Mars sample return would provide a fetch rover to collect Mars 2020 cached samples and load them into a Mars ascent vehicle for placement into orbit, with an ESA orbiter then collecting the sample canister and returning it to Earth.
Mechanical actuators for various parts of the Mars 2020 rover have been delivered to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
NASA directed the Mars 2020 mission in December to conduct a termination/continuation review for the SHERLOC instrument.
NASA leadership directed the Mars 2020 mission to continue developing SHERLOC with relatively minor modifications to procedures intended to minimize further cost growth and schedule risk.
NASA’s fiscal year 2020 budget request lists the Mars 2020 mission cost as $2,100,000,000 plus $300,000,000 for its first Martian year of operations.
The Mars 2020 team evaluated descopes to SHERLOC that would reduce capabilities in order to lower technical risk and cost but found nothing obvious to implement.