NASA Delays Mission To Mars

NASA has postponed the target date for the launch of its next Mars Scout mission by two years due to an undisclosed organizational conflict of interest between the final two team’s proposals.

NASA was earlier planning the launch for 2011 and will now fund proposals for a launch in 2013. The delay is expected to increase the cost of the $475 million project by a further $40 million.

Revised proposals for the mission are now set for August 2008, and the assessment and selection will take place in December 2008.

This was the shortest delay possible for the mission as planetary alignment between earth and Mars occurs once every 26 months.

However, it should be noted that this is only the first time since 1994 that NASA will miss an opportunity to send a mission to Mars. With a European probe also, already being postponed to 2013, Russia is the only nation expected to send a mission in 2011.

Two proposals were finalized for further evaluation from among 26 others in the first round of the Mars Scout 2006 competition.

These were the ‘Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution’ mission, or MAVEN led by Bruce Jakosky and the ‘The Great Escape’, or TGE, mission led by Jim Burch.

Both the missions are designed to provide related measurements of Mars' upper atmosphere, as well as its dynamics and evolution.

Earlier, in November, NASA had postponed the Scout mission's evaluation, selection, and declaration to resolve an organizational conflict of interest discovered in one of the mission proposal team's Phase A Concept Study.

Although refusing to disclose details, Doug McCuistion, NASA's Mars Exploration program director said the conflict, which was announced on Nov. 28, was related to procurement.

McCuistion addressed the issue saying, “We regret the delay, but NASA is taking this step to be proactive in preventing problems early on.”

“Because these are cost-capped missions, it is better to address the schedule risk now rather than put the winning proposer at a cost and schedule disadvantage from the start,” he added. “Delaying the next Scout mission and allowing the mission teams to replan their proposed missions for 2013 reestablishes an acceptable schedule.”

Although, NASA is right in saying that postponing the mission will ‘reduce the risk of cost overruns driven by the tight mission schedule that would have resulted if launch had remained in 2011’, the inflation costs incurred due to the delay should also be kept in mind.

Also, the recent repeated delays of the space shuttle ‘Atlantis’ and the malfunctioning probes abroad the International Space Station have only further added to the agencies list of problems.