Potential Landing Sites for EU Mars Rover Selected

kfz versicherung writes "In 2013 the European Space Agency will launch its mission to Mars - ExoMars. The multi-million-euro mission calls for a rover weighing just over 200kg that can trundle over the martian soil in search of past and present life. Now prime landing spots have been selected. The list includes two sites at Meridiani Planum, the flat expanse near Mars' equator where Nasa's Opportunity found possible evidence for an ancient sea. Early in Earth's history, all the primordial biochemistry took place in phyllosilicates, some kind of mineral that is a good matrix for preserving organic matter. Scientists are guessing that a similar site is the best place to start looking for fossil life on the Red Planet."

Re:Multi-million euro?

[Ashran]

Mars Rover: According this article [space.com] on space.com

The mission's total cost -- about $600 million -- may have to be deferred from NASA's budget, Weiler said, but would not cause the cancellation of any other mission at NASA. The Mars rovers are an "agency priority," he said. The second rover costs about $200 million, half of the $300 million to $450 million to build and launch the first.

Wikipedia on MER Mission [wikipedia.org]

The total cost of building, launching, landing and operating the rovers on the surface for the initial 90 day primary mission was about US $820 million)

And according to the (Pathfinder [wikipedia.org] site on wikipedia

Viking missions cost $935 million in 1974 or $3.5 billion in 1997 (not adjusted for inflation) Pathfinder mission $280 million, including the launch vehicle and mission operations.

Re:First time luck I hope

[antifoidulus]

Like the ESA's Beagle 2 [wikipedia.org]? This is not their first rover.

*EU* mars rovers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I may be nit-picking- but the ESA and the EU are actually rather distinct entities. The EU has no space agency.
Some ESA member states, such as Switzerland, are not EU members, and they usually become rather touchy if ESA and EU get too close for comfort.

EU institutions are all switching to .EU addresses. The ESA however will remain under .int in the foreseeable future (it has a redirect from esa.eu to esa.int though).

Re:Multi-million euro?

[iamlucky13]

Mars Rover and MER in your response are the same thing. The Space.com article is very out of date, and they had some cost overruns after that which pushed the mission to $820 million, which included I believe the first year of operations and science. I believe NASA has spent another couple hundred million on operations and science due to the extensions...a lot of money, but a lot less than equivalent new missions.

Also, the Mars Science Laboratory [nasa.gov] currently being built for a launch in 2009 is looking to cost around $1.8 billion USD (a little over a billion Euros, IIRC). It will be nuclear-powered, land completely ready to go instead of in those nifty airbags the MER's came in on, and is roughly the size of a Volkswagen (which is why the airbags won't work). It's supposed to last about 2 years, so if it runs the way the MER's have, NASA will still be trying to kill it off 20 years from now (just kidding...that's ridiculously unlikely).

MSL also ran into budget issues, and has increased in cost several times over the last couple of years, so NASA recently cancelled two rather fascinating instruments to keep the cost down. The first was the descent imager, which I'm not sure how much scientific value it would've had, but the time-lapse video of the descent would have been fascinating. The other was the ChemCam, a marvelous laser and spectrometer combo that would allow scientists to analyze the chemical composition of rocks from up to 40 feet away. However, the descent imager on the Mars Phoenix Lander currently en route turned out to have a fatal flaw, so the operations budget for that got switched to the construction budget for the MSL. Also, the Chemcam team realized that it had come down to defeaturing the Chemcam or not flying it all, and went with the former option to get back in budget. They got some extra money that was saved because Mars Phoenix launched on time. Unfortunately, the sweet zoom capability of the mast camera was cut out and not re-instated.