Mars program faces turning point

By Leonard David

Space Insider columnist

updated 6:08 p.m. ET March 23, 2009

HOUSTON - The robotic Mars program is sort of a planetary Dead Man Walking these days, as scientists debate what missions should be next on the agenda and how Mars should compete for funding with other compelling destinations ranging from our own moon to potentially life-harboring moons in the outer solar system.

Longtime Mars researcher Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center thinks it's time to recast the exploration agenda for the Red Planet.

"The NASA Mars program is at a turning point," McKay argues in the April edition of The Mars Quarterly, a Mars Society newsletter. A trio of factors are converging that should prompt a reset of the space agency's pinball wizard of a Red Planet exploration program, he writes:

• The Mars Science Laboratory was recently delayed to 2011 and has seen its price tag soar to roughly $2.2 billion.

• Costs of Mars robotic missions will continue rising as larger, more competent missions are proposed. Mars missions have moved into the cost category of the "flagship" missions to the outer solar system.

• Mars is now in competition for the position of primary astrobiology target with other worlds – particularly Saturn's moons Titan and organics-spitting Enceladus, McKay argues. While the search for a second genesis of life in our solar system may still drive missions, he states that these missions may not be to Mars.

This week at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference here, researchers are expected to debate the plans for Mars vs. other destinations. And there is no shortage of viewpoints.

"It's fair to say that the Mars program is in disarray," said Bruce Jakosky, a noted Mars researcher and astrobiologist at the University of Colorado in Boulder. "NASA is still working to sort out the Mars Science Laboratory problems and from where the money will come to pay for the overruns."

Jakosky disagrees that the program needs a complete overhaul, however.

Success or failure so far?
McKay salutes the data gleaned by orbiters, landers and rovers — information that collectively has added to our knowledge of Mars, "even if they have not provided much additional evidence supporting the possibility of life at the present or in the past."

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Taken all together, McKay argues, "the exploration Mars over the decade since the start of the Mars program has not strengthened our hope that life might have been present... in fact [it] has diminished it."

McKay believes that for Mars to retain a special place in exploration, the rationale for studying the place is not driven purely by science — astrobiology or planetary. Rather, Mars is the only world where we can imagine sustained human activity.

"A vigorous program of robotic exploration is needed to determine if Mars is a world in which humans can live and work and to prepare for human exploration. Orbiters, rovers, drills and sample return missions are all needed to prepare for human exploration," McKay asserts.

There is no time to lose, argues McKay. "I conclude that Mars should continue to be a special target for robotic exploration precisely because it will be the scene of extensive human exploration in the future."

McKay emphasized to me that his basic point is that "for the Mars Program to remain viable, it needs to become part of the Exploration Program ... it needs to focus on paving the way for human exploration. And this means sample return."

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