Future Mars missions: Faster, better, cheaper?

Curiosity will be NASA's last blockbuster Mars expedition for a while ? marking a turning point in our relationship with the Red Planet

FUTURE historians of Mars might note 5 August 2012 as the moment when humanity's long relationship with the Red Planet entered a new era. If all goes well, that will be the date that the Mars Science Laboratory touches down, after an intricate descent which even NASA predicts will be "seven minutes of terror".

This huge rover, better known as Curiosity, is aimed at a 5-kilometre-high heap of sediment that should provide information about Mars's entire history - perhaps including traces of ancient or even current life.

So the stakes are high. But it's likely to be the last such flagship expedition we see for some time, as NASA's near-monopoly on Mars exploration gives way to a plethora of smaller, cheaper missions by other countries and, soon, private companies.

Fans of the US space agency and of blockbuster spacecraft may be disappointed, but planetary-science enthusiasts should be exhilarated. Now that NASA has done the groundwork, future missions need not be as lavish, but can be more numerous and highly targeted, deepening our knowledge of Mars (see "Curiosity rover is turning point for Mars exploration").

We need all the information we can get. Questions abound about the planet's geology, hydrology and atmospheric development. And for the first time, those answers may be of real commercial, as well as academic, interest. Some who have set their sights on Mars are planning in earnest for human exploration - and even colonisation. But much more research is needed first.

NASA is by no means out of the race. It has been here before. During the 1990s the agency embarked on 16 varied missions, including several to Mars, that were designed to be less individually ambitious. But a high failure rate meant that programme ended amid derision, its mantra of "faster, better, cheaper" becoming inexorably coupled with the wry rejoinder: "pick any two".

Nonetheless, the basic strategy is sound. Only a handful of these missions have to succeed for the programme to end up more cost-effective than a blockbuster like Curiosity. So Mars fans should hope that NASA and its rivals can make the paradigm work this time. Humanity's relationship with Mars may depend on it.

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