

Curiosity the Second

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This new rover, which doesn’t yet have a name, will be virtually identical to Curiosity. It will actually be fashioned from Curiosity’s spare parts, including a spare nuclear battery (thermoelectric generator) that’s kicking around in NASA’s garage. Following on from the success of Curiosity’s novel EDL (entry, descent, landing) involving a sky crane, the new rover will descend to the surface of the Red Planet in the same way.

MSL Curiosity system diagramBasically, this new rover is capitalizing on the situation. Curiosity (see: Inside NASA’s Curiosity: It’s an Apple Airport Extreme… with wheels) has been a massive success so far, and it simply makes a lot of sense to build another one while the prevailing conditions are positive. If NASA waits, it might be harder to find the necessary parts, or mission-critical engineers might retire.

The new rover won’t be completely identical to Curiosity, though. “It will have new instruments. We’re going to put out a letter to colleagues to ask for folks who want to be in the science definition team,” says John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator of science. “The idea is to work through the winter and spring, and have an announcement of opportunity mid-summer for actual instruments, because while 2020 might seem a long way off, it’s really not. Curiosity was about a decade in the works.” While we have no idea what these new instruments will be, NASA has been hinting that it’s interested in a “sample cache” that could collect and store Martian samples. These samples would then be collected by a future (manned?) mission to Mars, and returned to Earth for further analysis.

The surface of Titan, photographed by the Huygens probe in 2005NASA is budgeting $1.5 billion Curiosity II; significantly less than the $2.5 billion spent on Real Curiosity. In the face of federal budget cuts, his new rover is only possible because it uses a proven design and a bunch of spare parts.

“The Obama administration is committed to a robust Mars exploration program,” says NASA administrator Charles Bolden. “With this next mission, we’re ensuring America remains the world leader in the exploration of the Red Planet, while taking another significant step toward sending humans there in the 2030s.”

Even so, though, there are scientists who would rather that the $1.5 billion was spent elsewhere — such as exploring the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, or another planet. At the AGU meeting, NASA spent plenty of time discussing the new rover, and its participation in other Martian missions — but didn’t mention any other missions to explore moons, asteroids, or indeed any non-Martian body.

Titan, a moon of Saturn that is the only object in the Solar System other than Earth that is thought to have surface water, has still only ever had one photo taken from its surface (pictured right). For $1.5 billion, we could almost certainly land another probe there and find out what’s really going on, and perhaps finally find signs of life elsewhere in the Solar System.

Now read: NASA must fix its public image, or die amid apathy


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  • VirtualMark

    This makes a lot of sense – they don’t have to spend much on R&D, they already have parts and know what to do. And they can then explore a totally different area of Mars.

    I don’t understand the point in collecting samples tho – surely if there’s a manned mission it’d be easier for them to collect samples. And i certainly agree that it would be far more interesting exploring somewhere else – personally i’d like to see Europa(Jupiters moon) explored as it has the possibility of life.

    • Michael Garrett

      What I don’t understand is, if they HAVE done all this R&D and essentially Curiosity II is just Curiosity I with new instruments, why is the project figure still in the billions!?

      • Sebastian Anthony

        Building it, launching it, managing it — all still fairly significant sums of money :)

        • Michael Garrett

          Sebastian…always answering with his FACTS and LOGIC. :)

        • Pete Goldie

          However, Sebastian, your comment in the article: “For $1.5 billion, we could almost certainly land another probe” (on Titan) is not valid. MSL is custom-made for Mars, the landing system would not work on Titan, nor would the rover operate at -300F. A new probe designed for Titan would cost considerably more.

          • Sebastian Anthony

            Well, Cassini-Huygens cost $3 bil I think — and that was a while ago.
            I’m not talking about another Curiosity-type rover on Titan. I don’t even know if that’s possible, with the weather conditions there and stuff. A probe is quite different from a rover, usually :)

  • Dennis Cowsky

    High salaries and long careers will cost us another 1.5 BILLION. What a waste! Why such interest in Mars unless they know life exist there, but won’t let the cat out of the bag. Two more trips there before the 2020 ship of fools land. I think they should have their 2020 vision testing before embarking on this foolish spending spree. China and Russia will be going to Mars, so let them waste their time and money.

    • Matthew Evans

      Because that’s exactly what this country doesn’t need more of, high salaries and long careers. Down with scientific exploration, low-wage manufacturing jobs for everyone!

      • Dennis Cowsky

        Please go and change your light bulb. The one you have now is burnt out.

  • Steve Kruckheimmer

    Regarding “This news has been met with a mix of reactions, with some planetary scientists wondering why NASA continues to focus on Mars, when there are ice-covered moons like Saturn’s Titan that remain relatively unexplored.” Answer: What else can one do with Mars other than send up more rovers! It demonstrates several things:

    1. Our natural limits of ingenuity. I mean, how many “big ideas” can you expect? Science does NOT move in leaps and bounds, contrary to our magical thinking society.

    2. It’s just another day at the office. Your day is mostly a repeat of the previous. Same with the guys at NASA, and everyone else.They will keep doing what they know! Human life is, ultimately, mundane.

    3. The fact that man is not ready to go to Mars – and won’t be for a long time. Bear in mind that when man gets to Mars he will need to be entirely, 100% self-sufficient, since he won’t be able to call Earth and say hey, what do I do next. I mean, we’ll have to be able to grow food on Mars, make clothes, manufacture drugs, maintain our stuff, do R&D, etc., etc. And we already know that Martian dust can’t grow plants, due to a lack of the necessary minerals and gases like nitrogen. So things really do NOT look promising.

    4. Other planetary bodies are just too far away! A single project must be conducted during a tiny portion of a single life time for it to have meaning to anyone. The fact is, people want to SEE the RESULTS of their WORK! Face it, space-time is BIG. We can’t overcome this reality.

  • Joel Detrow

    “This news has been met with a
    mix of reactions, with some planetary scientists wondering why NASA
    Saturn’s Titan that remain relatively unexplored.”

    Because can we explore and master one planet at a time, please?

    • Puriya Yazdanfard

      Explore?…. Yea lets find more sand and dust on Mars YAY! I certainly hope that they are doing this to learn something from it not to see what there is on Mars. So far Mars has proven itself very uninteresting at least in my eyes… Its a waste of money. Focus the money on space mining or long range exploration, something we can benefit from.

      Maybe what I am saying makes no sense, but its just my thoughts….

  • Jeffrey Clinard

    You have to wonder, what are we going to get for $1.5 billion dollars? All of the big gains are likely going to be obtained by Curiosity. We could do a retread of that, or cut $1.5 billion dollars from the national debt.

  • Tom Boughton

    Mars Exploration Program Director (ret.) Doug McCuistion to present at Product Innovation (PI) 2013 congress He will share his experiences of a project
    that required huge ingenuity, continual design innovation and the management of
    an entirely unique set of challenges encountered when trying to land a car sized
    robotic rover on a planet with conditions not replicable on Earth.