NASA has not completely forgotten Mars
The failure of the Mars Climat Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander probes last fall has had a great impact and NASA was considered to have decided to cancel some of the trips it had prepared for Mars. But it seems that in the coming years at least two projects will be carried out.
The first, still unknown, will be in 2003 and the second in 2007. The latter, in collaboration with the French Space Agency, aims to collect a sample of 500 g of Martian soil. The mission, called Mars Sample Return, will feature a robot, an orbital probe and a rocket. The probe will take the rocket and robot to the orbit of Mars, the rocket will take the robot to the surface of the planet and the robot will collect the samples.
Once finished, the three will return together to Earth. The project being prepared for 2003 may be similar to that of Mars Climate Orbiter or Pathfinder. The first would analyze the water remains of the atmosphere of Mars and the second the surface rocks. However, the incidents that have occurred at NASA in recent months do not allow confirming anything.
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