Martian space race

On 5 February 2004 The Times Science Correspondent reported:

Europe intends to go head‑to‑head with the United States in a race to bring a piece of Mars back to Earth in the next chapter of the search for life on the Red Planet.

A European mission to scoop up half a kilogram of Martian rocks and carry them home for analysis will blast off in 2011, European Space Agency (ESA) officials announced yesterday.

The project, which will involve British companies and scientists, is the most ambitious element of the ESA’s Aurora programme, a “road map” for exploring Mars that aims to land European astronauts on the planet by 2033. It will also put the agency in direct competition with NASA, which is planning its own sample return mission at the same time.

The Aurora programme is offering the first serious challenge to the US lead in civilian space flight since the Soviet successes of the 1950s and 1960s. While the two space agencies prefer to be seen as partners rather than adversaries, their increasing emphasis on Mars exploration – as shown by President Bush’s recent pledge of a manned mission to the planet – is inevitably lending an edge of rivalry to their efforts.

As the orbits of Earth and Mars make missions practical only every two years or so, each forthcoming “window” will see a flotilla of similar European and American craft being launched for the Red Planet. Last year the ESA’s Mars Express and Beagle 2 probes blasted off just a couple of weeks before NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers and such races will soon become commonplace.

In 2007 NASA is sending a lander named Phoenix and the ESA is considering a plan to refly Beagle 2, possibly as a pack of four or five landers to ensure maximum chances of success.

Two years afterwards, both agencies want to send large rover missions to the planet – NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory and the ESA’s ExoMars which would seek signs of life and test for hazards to future human pioneers.

The agencies are following identical timetables for sample return: in 2011, a “return vehicle” would be launched and parked in orbit around Mars waiting for a second mission in 2014. This would land on the planet, then blast off into orbit to dock with the waiting orbiter and return home.

Both agencies see manned missions to the Moon as essential precursors to sending astronauts to Mars: the ESA envisages a human Moon mission in about 2024 while NASA wants to establish a permanent lunar base at the same time. The earliest likely date for a manned mission to Mars is 2030. The European “road map” was presented by Franco Ongaro, the Aurora mission’s project manager at a London conference held to consider Britain’s contribution.

The Government is likely to support the project, even though it does not yet back manned spaceflight. Aurora is structured to allow countries to opt in for five years at a time, so Britain would be able to drop out when the manned phase begins. The initial five year budget has been set at €900 million (£615 million) and British scientists want the Government to contribute £30 million a year. It spends about £180 million annually on civilian space exploration.

Dr Ongaro played down the notion that the ESA and NASA were embarking on a fresh space race, but insisted that Europe was just as well placed as the US to lead worthwhile missions to Mars.

He said that the Aurora budget was comparable to NASA’s expenditure on long‑term Mars exploration and that both would have to overcome similar technical challenges. “Neither us nor the Americans know at the moment how a mission to the Moon or to Mars can be done,” he said. “For the next five years both NASA and ourselves are going to be working on exactly the same thing: how to do it. We intend to have a programme of the same type and scale as theirs.”

He said that unmanned probes, sample return and manned Moon landings would be essential before a manned mission. “We need to evolve these before taking the risk with humans. We need to learn to walk before we can run.”

Professor Colin Pillinger, Beagle 2’s chief scientist, said Britain should sign up to the first stage of Aurora, which offers focus on unmanned exploration of Mars. “The initial stages have my wholehearted support. Let’s wait and see about the later stages, when we ask humans to do the fieldwork rather than robots.”

The 2009 ExoMars rover and the 2011–14 Mar’s Sample Return (MSR) missions are Aurora’s “flagship” projects, which will be confirmed as soon as funding is made available by member states. EADS Astrium, the British satellite company that built Beagle 2, has won contracts to develop the concepts for both missions.

ExoMars is likely to be a six‑wheel rover similar to Spirit and Opportunity but with a longer range and instruments that can look for past and present life. NASA’s rovers are designed only to search for mineral evidence of water. An attached orbiter would test a docking system for sample return effectively throwing out a capsule and capturing it again, to prove it can be done far from Earth.

MSR would be much more ambitious, aiming to bring 500 grams of Mars rocks back to Earth for analysis. This would allow much more complex experiments to be performed than would be possible with a robotic probe alone. Professor Pillinger said such a sample would contain about a billion grains of 50 microns.

Professor Pillinger added:

“As modern geo‑scientists can treat a grain this size as a rock, it could keep all the geoscientists in Europe happy for some time.”