Two-Year Delay Blamed On "Testing And Hardware Challenges"
NASA's much-touted Mars Science Laboratory will spend more time
on Earth than originally planned. The space agency announced
Thursday the MSL will launch two years later than previously
planned, in the fall of 2011. The original target launch date of
October 2009 "no longer is feasible" due to "testing and hardware
challenges that must be addressed to ensure mission success."
The window for a 2009 launch ends in late October. The relative
positions of Earth and Mars are favorable for flights to Mars only
a few weeks every two years. The next launch opportunity after 2009
is in 2011.
"We will not lessen our standards for testing the mission's
complex flight systems, so we are choosing the more responsible
option of changing the launch date," said Doug McCuistion, director
of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
"Up to this point, efforts have focused on launching next year,
both to begin the exciting science and because the delay will
increase taxpayers' investment in the mission. However, we've
reached the point where we can not condense the schedule further
without compromising vital testing."
NASA cleared the Mars Science Laboratory for a 2009 launch
earlier this year... but the team recently completed a second
assessment of the progress it has made over the past three months,
and those findings convinced NASA the launch date needed to be
changed, to incorporate needed design changes with "key parts of
the spacecraft," according to the space agency.
"Despite exhaustive work in multiple shifts by a dedicated team,
the progress in recent weeks has not come fast enough on solving
technical challenges and pulling hardware together," said Charles
Elachi, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,
CA. "The right and smart course now for a successful mission is to
launch in 2011."
The advanced rover is one of the most technologically
challenging interplanetary missions ever designed. It will use new
technologies to adjust its flight while descending through the
Martian atmosphere, and to set the rover on the surface by lowering
it on a tether from a hovering descent stage. Advanced research
instruments make up a science payload 10 times the mass of
instruments on NASA's Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers.
Powered by a small nuclear reactor, the Mars Science Laboratory
is engineered to drive longer distances over rougher terrain than
previous rovers. It will employ a new surface propulsion
system.
The mission will explore a Mars site where images taken by
NASA's orbiting spacecraft indicate there were wet conditions in
the past. Four candidate landing sites are under consideration. The
rover will check for evidence of whether ancient Mars environments
had conditions favorable for supporting microbial life and
preserving evidence of that life if it existed there.