Mars Scout Program seeks more $$$

NASA's Mars Scout program is seeking more money in its fiscal 2007 budget request to allow for the per-mission cost cap to be raised from its original level of $325 million to a level above $400 million.

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NASA's post-2009 Mars exploration program remains in flux as NASA shifts funds to support its human spaceflight priorities. An early casualty of this process was the canceled Mars Telecom Orbiter, which would have launched in 2009. The new set of post-2009 Mars missions is being finalized as part of the FY '07 budget process. Nonetheless, the Scout program expects to release its announcement of opportunity for the 2011 launch competition early next year.

In addition to traditional orbiter and lander concepts, the next Scout competition is expected to see two proposals for flying unmanned aircraft on the red planet - Ames' MATADOR and Langley's ARES (DAILY, Aug. 9). McCuistion said he would not be surprised to see other innovative proposals, including surface penetrators, hoppers or walkers.

Full article from Aviation Week here.

It'd really be kewl if one of the proposals was a rover that went to the edge of Valles Marineris and dropped a cable down the side with a scientific package. I doubt that any NASAites read my blog though at this point, so this idea will be ignored for a while...alas.