Mars Surveyor 2003

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The Mars Surveyor 2003 and 2005 missions are currently not well-defined. The current plans call for a lander/rover to search for organic materials and signs of past life. The rover will have an imaging system, a sampling arm, rock and soil acquisition and experiments to study the mineralogy and chemical properties of rocks and soils.

Mission Timelines

• May-Jun 2003 - Mars 2003 Orbiter and Lander Launch

NASA IRTF Mission Support

• Future missions, including Mars98 and 2001, will use aerobraking and aerocapture. It is crucial that the amount of dust in the atmosphere be accurately known, because dust inflates the atmosphere and increases the density, critically affecting the aerobraking. Earth-based monitoring of the atmospheric dust content is therefore absolutely essential. It can be done either in the IR (CO band) or in the microwave region.