NASA is currently pursuing an aggressive, science-driven agenda of robotic exploration of Mars, with the aim of concluding the current decade of research with the first landed analytical laboratory on the martian surface since the Viking missions of the 1970s. This mobile science laboratory will propel Mars exploration into the next decade for which the search for evidence of biological activity is the ultimate goal. For the past year, an intensive effort has been underway to look beyond the current decade toward future investigations that lead to discovery. Sponsored by the NASA Office of Space Science, this effort involved the synthesis of many alternate lines of scientific inquiry together with programmatic and scientific decision criteria. These investigation pathways were then linked with methods tailored to identifying gaps in our current technological investments that must be filled if future exploration is to be pursued cost-effectively. The foundation of the strategy is that Next Decade exploration will build upon the new knowledge gained in this decade. Planning the future, while embracing the fact that unknown and unpredictable discoveries should determine the course of research, has been accomplished by creating explicit alternate Pathways of exploration. Each Pathway included in this strategic plan comprises a specific sequence of robotic missions required to accomplish it by means of targeted measurements. In addition, NASA, cognizant of the uncertainty inherent in exploration, understands that these plans will evolve with time.

Read more:
"Mars Exploration Strategy 2009-2020", Mars Science Program Synthesis Group
(view / download PDF)

Publications

Mars Sample Return: Testing the Last Meter of Rendezvous and Sample Capture    JOURNAL OF SPACECRAFT AND ROCKETS Vol. 44, No. 3, May-June 2007    Authors: Richard P. Kornfeld, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, and Joe C. Parrish and Steve Sell, Payload Systems, Inc.