NASA awards Mars 2020 launch to ULA

This 2016 image comes from computer-assisted-design work on the 2020 rover. The design leverages many successful features of NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, but it adds new science instruments and a sampling system to carry out the new goals for the mission Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech (NASA / Orlando Sentinel)

United Launch Alliance will coordinate NASA's launch of its next Mars rover toward the Red Planet from Earth, the agency announced Thursday.

The Mars 2020 mission will help researchers lay the groundwork for future human exploration of Earth's space neighbor. Mars 2020 will take off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida aboard a ULA Atlas V rocket. The company is a partnership between Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
Once there, the rover will conduct research on the planet to assess hazards and natural resources that might aid human explorers, NASA said in a release. In the release, NASA estimated that the cost of the 2020 mission had reached $243 million.

In July, NASA announced that it was closing in on the construction of the Mars 2020 rover, which will search for evidence of past life on Mars and collect samples to return to Earth. NASA has sent 15 robotic mission to Mars ever since a Mariner 4 fly by in 1965. Mars 2020 is the next one to do so.

Billionaire SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said his company's repeated efforts to land spent rockets after launching satellites into space have been a precursor to an eventual manned mission to Mars. Florida's Space Coast has seen frequent launches this year by both SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. Both companies are expected to send manned missions to the International Space Station in the next couple of years.

Source: Orlando Sentinel

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Joined Stellar Hub as an editor in the summer of 2016.