The recent failures of the Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter missions have sparked a thorough NASA review of the entire Mars exploration program, but the scientific goals will remain, said Steven W. Squyres, Cornell professor of astronomy, in a talk on "Mars Exploration" at the American Association for the Advancement of science meeting.
"These losses have caused a rethinking of the Mars program, but they have not caused us to reassess our goals; they have caused us to reassess our techniques and our schedule," he said.
Squyres is chairman of NASA's Space Science Advisory Committee, one of seven standing committees of the top-level NASA Advisory Council, which is central to NASA's intensive Mars program reevaluation.
"We just suffered significant setbacks. But I think we are well down the road to recovering," he said. "The president has increased the budget and has demonstrated strong, enthusiastic support for the Mars program, and I'm confident we will persevere and answer this question."
Review results will be released mid-March, including decisions on the Mars Surveyor 2001 missions, which had been set to launch in 14 months with an orbiter and a lander very similar in design to the recently lost Mars Polar Lander.
Squyres is principal scientist on the 2001 mission for the Athena Precursor Experiment (APEX), four instruments aimed at studying Mars' early history.
Squyres believes that the Mars 2001 Lander's fate is uncertain. "We don't know why Mars Polar Lander failed, and because the design of this spacecraft Ð the legs, the descent rocket, the parachute, all the things to get to the surface Ð are essentially identical, this mission is being intensively reevaluated," he said.
"The instruments for the lander are supposed to be shipped to Lockheed Martin in Denver on the first of June. So things are happening, and the problem is that whatever we decide is going to happen in '05, '07 and '09 has a very direct impact on the things that come before it. We do not have the luxury, given the aggressive schedule we're on for 2001 and 2003, to take a long time to make a decision."
Also being reevaluated is the Mars Sample Return Mission, with spacecraft launches in 2003 and 2005, and a coconut-sized spacecraft returning to Earth with roughly 500 grams of Martian samples, Squyres said.
"The previous plan involved holding the program to a schedule in which samples would be back on Earth by 2008. NASA has lifted that restriction," he said. "There is now no firm date by which samples must be returned; in fact, there's no hard date by which anything has to happen. All constraints have been lifted from the program except two: Do great science, and don't bust the budget."
"Now what we're saying is, maybe we've got to slow it down a little. Maybe we're being too aggressive; maybe we don't want to send that many missions. We can send fewer and make them more successful," Squyres said.
"The missions themselves are not the goals," he added."The goal is science. The goal is a scientific understanding of Mars -- its suitability for life, its climate, its geology and resources."
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