NASA Will Not Fly Next Mars Rover Until 2020
By Frank Morring, Jr. . Source: Aviation Week & Space Technology .
The big nuclear-powered Mars rover is NASA's last chance to drive scientific instruments around on the Martian surface in this decade. After that, it may be 2020 before the U.S. can afford to launch another rover to the red planet. As recently as last fall, NASA had plans for launching a mission to bring back Mars samples to analyze on Earth as early as 2022. Now the expert team set up to develop new options for a downsized Mars program is working on the assumption that there will be surface samples delivered to orbit around Mars no later than 2033 ...
