NASA Announces Mars 2020 Rover Payload to Explore the Red Planet as Never Before
NASA has just announced that the next rover they will be sending to Mars in 2020 will be carrying instruments that will be conducting investigations never done before on the planet.
NASA announced the selected Mars 2020 rover instruments Thursday at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. Managers made the selections out of 58 proposals received in January from researchers and engineers worldwide. Proposals received were twice the usual number submitted for instrument competitions in the recent past. This is an indicator of the extraordinary interest by the science community in the exploration of the Mars. The selected proposals have a total value of approximately $130 million for development of the instruments.
The Mars 2020 mission will be based on the design of the highly successful Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, which landed almost two years ago, and currently is operating on Mars. The new rover will carry more sophisticated, upgraded hardware and new instruments to conduct geological assessments of the rover’s landing site, determine the potential habitability of the environment, and directly search for signs of ancient Martian life.
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