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mendax [soylentnews.org] writes:

The ever-geeky, ever-reliable El Reg has published a story [theregister.co.uk] which indicates that NASA has given the go-ahead for the construction of the next Mars rover, due to be launched in 2020, just 4 short years from now.

All being well, NASA will launch the successor to Curiosity Rover in 2020. And this time the agency hopes to prepare samples for an as-yet-blue-sky manned mission that could one day return them to Earth for analysis.

NASA says its Mars Rover 2020 project has passed a “significant milestone” – Key Decision Point (KDP) C – which means it's ready for construction to start.

If they ever meet, Curiosity Rover will recognise the Mars Rover 2020 as a relative, since the agency's program executive for the project George Tahu notes that it uses a “significant amount” of “heritage components” from the older project (helping both with budget and timing).

One of those heritage components is an improved version of the "Sky Crane" that successfully landed Curiosity in 2012.

Other articles on this subject can be found here [astrobio.net], here [gizmodo.com], and here [nasa.gov]. The last link is the NASA press release.

My take on this? Congress needs to fund NASA to build and operate a dozen of these rovers. Imagine the incredible science that could be done.

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