NASA's Mars exploration programme may revert to the landing technology used on the successful Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997, which used inflatable airbags to soften the impact during a landing unaided by retro-rockets.
A 2003 mission, involving a rover larger than the Sojourner used on the Mars Pathfinder mission is expected to get the go ahead in July. The Mars Mobile Lander would feature a scientific rover capable of travelling 100m (330ft) a day, providing "unprecedented measurements of minerology and geochemistry of the surface", says NASA.
The other candidate mission is of the Mars Surveyor Orbiter, a craft the size of the Mars Global Surveyor now orbiting the planet and is designed to recapture the science capability of the Mars Climate Orbiter (MCO), lost in October.
A 2001 mission, already under preparation, will also be an orbiter, the survivor of the planned dual mission. This was to have a rocket-assisted lander but was cancelled after the dual failures of the MCO and Mars Polar Lander last year.
These failures resulted in a slowing down and re-assessment of NASA's programme, under which the launch of a Mars sample return mission in 2005 had been planned.
"These two mission concepts embody the requirements we leave learned through the hard lessons of the two recent Mars mission failures," says Scott Hubbard, NASA's Mars programme director.
Source: Flight International
