NASA-ESA Mars Exploration Joint Initiative

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have agreed to establish a road map for future Mars missions.

The plan, known as the Mars Exploration Joint Initiative (MEJI), will serve to define a string of lander and orbiter flights to Mars in 2016, 2018 and 2020 that would ultimately lead to a sample return mission in the ensuing decade. The agencies also established a joint architecture review team to determine the most viable joint mission architectures for the initiative. The team's findings will be submitted for review to ESA member states and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

The moves were agreed upon by ESA science chief David Southwood and NASA Associate Administrator for Science Ed Weiler at a bilateral meeting in Plymouth, England June 29-30.

In addition to ESA's ExoMars project, nominally set for 2016, missions will include astrobiological, geological and other high-priority investigations that could pave the way for sample return, including perhaps a network of fixed geophysics stations originally intended for ExoMars (Aerospace DAILY, March 11).

The MEJI plan was motivated by the need to redefine ExoMars and descope its science package, because of lower than expected budget resources within ESA, and to reassess NASA's Mars exploration plans following a delay in the Mars Science Laboratory from 2009 to 2011 (Aerospace DAILY, Dec. 5, 2008).

Among the first tasks of the team will be to finalize NASA's role in ExoMars. The U.S. agency is studying supply of the launch, with an Atlas V and a telecom orbiter. One of the issues to be resolved, NASA engineers say, is whether the orbiter, which also would carry a science package, would be able to accommodate the large lander planned for ExoMars.

ESA has already worked out a framework agreement with the Russian Space Agency that would allow it to cooperate on ExoMars, including provision of backup launch services and a payload contribution, along with mission support.

hrm.

I whole heartedly support the different space agencies contributions to each other's mars missions. Cross pollination is a good thing. However, the idea that we ought to unify the missions into one Mars program leaves a bad taste in my mouth. International programs tend to be much more expensive. I need to find Paul Adam's old smn post about which countries to include in projects because its turned out to be oh-so-true.