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NASA Reveals Plans for New Mars Rover

Wednesday, December 5, 2012 4:20

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(Before It's News)

Sequels are all the rage these days… even for NASA, apparently.

At the American Geophysical Union 2012 convention in San Francisco today, NASA’s associate administrator for science John Grunsfeld revealed the agency’s plans for another Mars mission. Slated to land in 2020, it will be a rover based on the same design as Mars Science Laboratory. Estimated cost of the mission was announced to be $1.5 billion.

This news brought mixed reactions from many of those in attendance as well as followers online, as while more exploration of the Red Planet is certainly an exciting concept, we have all heard — and seen — countless tales of budget cuts and funding problems throughout NASA over recent years, and many proposed missions and collaborations have had to be shelved or cut short due to lack of funds (remember ExoMars?) Even though the budget for this mission is supposedly “not being taken from other areas,” it’s clearly not going to them either. It will be interesting to see how this plays out across the agency.

The full press release from NASA can be seen below:

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Read the rest of NASA Reveals Plans for New Mars Rover (570 words)

© Jason Major for Universe Today, 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments |
Post tags: 2020, AGU12, Mars, NASA, new mission, new rover, Rover