POSSIBILITIES FOR SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION on MARS USING TWO COLLABORATIVE ROVERS AT THE SAME SITE

We are reporting the results of a study sponsored by MEPAG to define the possibilities for cooperative science using two rovers under consideration for launch to Mars in 2018 (ESA’s ExoMars, and a NASA-sourced rover concept for which we use the working name of MAX-C). The group was asked to consider collaborative science opportunities both without change to either rover, as well as with some change allowed. The analysis started with analysis of shared and separate objectives. We concluded that the two rovers have two high priority shared objectives that could, in fact, form the basis of highly significant collaborative exploration activity:

1. At a site interpreted to contain evidence of past environments with high habitability potential and with high preservation potential for physical and chemical biosignatures, they could evaluate paleo-environmental conditions, assess the potential for preservation of biotic and/or prebiotic signatures, and search for possible evidence of past life and prebiotic chemistry and;
2. Collect, document, and package in a suitable manner, a set of samples sufficient to achieve the proposed scientific objectives of a future sample return mission.

Furthermore, the payloads proposed for these two rovers complement one another, and naturally lend themselves to cooperative exploration. It is possible to define a list of possible opportunities to add value through cooperation in a 2-rover mission that can be prioritized on the basis of increased science and expected implementation difficulty. Some of these ideas could be implemented with little or no change to the design of either rover, but for others significant change would be needed. Certain operational scenarios are implied in order to achieve the value indicated.

We recognize, however, that achieving cooperative science would imply making certain compromises by each rover, the most important of which include: 1) less time available for pursuing each rover’s independent objectives, 2) the need to share a landing site that may not be optimized for either rover, 3) and cost associated with some hardware modifications.