NASA Makes Progress: Landing Site for Mars 2020 Rover Slowly Revealed

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NASA announces its next mission to Mars for 2020. And while it is difficult to choose a location for the landing site, officials stay affirmed that they are making progress in picking up the best landing spot for the Mars 2020 rover.

According to the article posted in NASA website, the next rover is scheduled to be on route to Mars in 2020 carrying seven carefully-selected instruments to conduct unprecedented science and exploration technology investigations to the red planet.

Proposals are carefully chosen from the 58 received in January coming from the researchers and engineers worldwide. Because of the extraordinary interest by the science community in the exploration in Mars, the total value of these selected proposals reached to approximately $130 million just for the development of the instruments.

"Today we take another important step on our journey to Mars" said Charles Bolden, NASA administrator.

The mission will be based on the design of the Mars Science Laboratory Rover, Curiosity, that successfully landed on to the red planet two years ago, and are still operating until now.

NASA's new rover will carry more sophisticated, upgraded hardware and new instruments to conduct the geological assessments on the landing site and directly determine the potential habitability of the environment to search for the signs of an ancient Martian life.

John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said that "the Mars 2020 rover, with these new advanced instruments, including those from our international partners, holds the promise to unlock more mysteries on Mar's past as revealed in geological record." Grunsfeld also added that the mission will further search for life in the universe and open opportunities for an advance new capability in exploration technology.

While getting to and landing on Mars is hard, NASA officials are making further search for the potential landing sites for Mars 2020 rover.

As per Space, in August 2015, Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program, said that from the initial lists of 54 landing sites, 8 were selected for high-priority sites. Last week, Meyer gave an update on the site selection process at the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting in San Francisco along with Alex Longo, a high school student who has proposed the landing sites, and Betany Ehlmann, a scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who works on both the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Curiosity rover.

NASA will use a high-resolution imagery from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to scout for potential landing sites that could have supported life in the ancient past, a spot hosted with water, such as a long shoreline. Likewise, this is also done today for potential human missions to Mars in 2030.