After the success of Curiosity Rover, NASA plans to launch another robotic science rover into the Martian surface in 2020.
"The Obama administration is committed to a robust Mars exploration program," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said, according to NASA report. "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."
According to NASA, 2020 Mars rover program will use the same architecture which successfully carried Curiosity Rover to the Red Planet's surface. The space agency ensures a minimal cost involved in the new mission.
"This will ensure mission costs and risks are as low as possible, while still delivering a highly capable rover with a proven landing system," said the space agency, according to a report in eWeek. "The mission will constitute a vital component of a broad portfolio of Mars exploration missions in development for the coming decade."
There are other exploration efforts which are in plan, including the launch of Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter in 2013 to study the upper atmosphere of Mars and Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight), which will explore the deep interiors of the Red Planet, according to NASA.
"The challenge to restructure the Mars Exploration Program has turned from the seven minutes of terror for the Curiosity landing to the start of seven years of innovation," NASA's associate administrator for science, and astronaut John Grunsfeld said in a statement published in NASA news report. "This mission concept fits within the current and projected Mars exploration budget, builds on the exciting discoveries of Curiosity, and takes advantage of a favorable launch opportunity.
The NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover has analyzed the Martian soil and found a complex chemistry and has found water, sulphur and chlorine containing substances.
"We have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in the diverse environments of Gale Crater," said SAM Principal Investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
