NASA suspends next Mars rover mission

Future missions to Mars – including a manned launch to the Red Planet in the 2030s and the European Space Agency’s upcoming ExoMars orbiter in 2016 and rover in 2018 – are on schedule, according to NASA.

NASA has put its next Mars mission on hold indefinitely because of a leaky instrument.

Built by Lockheed Martin, the unmanned spacecraft was due to land on the red planet and drill deep into its surface to give scientists a better idea of how it was formed.

Over the next couple of months, NASA will assess options for repairing the faulty instrument, a sensitive seismometer that was provided by the French space agency, CNES.

The InSight spacecraft was set for launch in March. But the instrument’s sensors must operate in a vacuum with a pressure of no more than 1 microbar, and the vacuum seal failed during testing.

Earlier in the year, a leak was found and resolved.

The goal of the mission is to study the core, mantle and crust of Mars much akin to the study of Earth’s core, mantle and crust.

With the spacecraft already being prepped for launch, mission managers decided that there wasn’t enough time to make the needed repairs. This pushes the InSight’s launch back to 2018 at least, and further if the part ends up needing a redesign, which could take five years. “Space exploration is unforgiving”, noted John Grunsfeld, who heads NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, “and the bottom line is that we’re not ready to launch in the 2016 window”. “A decision on a path forward will be made in the coming months”, said Grunsfeld in a prepared statement.

The lander will be the first mission to permanently deploy instruments directly onto Martian ground using a robotic arm.

The instruments have been created to measure movements as small as the diameter of an atom. NASA has plans to send human beings to Mars.

The costs for the InSight mission, including launch and data analysis, are capped at $675 million, up from an initial $425 million, NASA Planetary Sciences Division Director Jim Green told reporters.