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NASA Plans Future Missions
to Red Planet into Next Century
Hoping for "better, faster, cheaper" exploratory missions, NASA inaugurated its Discovery Program in 1994. The purpose was to design lower-cost, more modest projects with clearly focused goals. An educational component was built into the program in an effort to make the general public more aware of the purpose and accomplishments of its missions to Mars and to other destinations
in the solar system.
In addition to Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor, as many as four more Mars-bound Discovery missions are scheduled through the
year 2005, one launch every 26 months (1998, 2001, 2003, and 2005), at times when the relative position of Earth and Mars is most favorable. The first will be the Mars Surveyor, actually two different spacecraft—an orbiter and a lander. Their assignment
will be to study weather and climate. The lander will have two stowaways, small scientific probes that are part of the New Millennium Program. These will use an advanced laser system to look for water beneath the planet's surface.
The next step may be a round-trip that would return rock and soil samples to Earth. Eventually there may be a human mission to Mars, perhaps as early as 2019.
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