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NASA announced last week that it plans to send a six-wheeled robot to Mars in
June 2003. At more than seven times the weight of the Sojourner rover that wowed
Mars enthusiasts three years ago, the new robot will dwarf its
predecessor—one of the few successful missions to the Red Planet in recent
years. However, NASA will rely on the same landing technology to get the buggy
there in one piece.

Cushioned by airbags, the so-far unnamed rover will parachute to the surface,
bounce roughly half a dozen times and tumble as far as a kilometre before coming
to a stop.

“The rover stands up, takes a look around, cuts the cord, and away we go,”
says Steven Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, leader of the
team developing the rover’s scientific instruments. The rover’s mission is to
search for geological evidence of long-gone water, Squyres says. He envisages
the rover landing in an area resembling a dry lake bed and then cruising around
to look at the most promising rocks and features.

2003 will be a good year for a landing. Earth will draw close to
Mars, making communications easier and increasing the payload that can reach the
planet. Mars will also be closer to the Sun, meaning more solar energy for the
robot.

But the alignment of the planets may not have been the only reason NASA chose
a rover instead of a rival orbiter project. Mars has seemingly declared war on
NASA’s “faster, cheaper, better” missions. Three Mars missions have either
crashed, failed or disappeared since 1993. To avoid another debacle, the agency
intends to increase resources for overseeing and reviewing the mission to levels
not seen since Pathfinder, says Scott Hubbard, Mars programme director. “We’re
going back to that version of faster, cheaper, better,” Hubbard says.