NEWS | June 16, 2015
NASA Administrator Signs Agreements to Advance Agency's Journey to Mars
Bolden and Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of the French space agency, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), signed an agreement for France to provide the mast for the SuperCam component of NASA’s Mars 2020 rover.
In terms of design, SuperCam is similar to the ChemCam on the Curiosity rover, which is currently traversing the surface of Mars. ChemCam analyzes rocks and soil to determine their compositions and identify samples for analysis by other instruments onboard Curiosity. SuperCam, however, will have significantly enhanced capabilities, equipped with four scientific instruments that will allow it to look for biosignatures – indicators of the past presence of life -- and identify samples for collection and possible return to Earth.
“I’m delighted that our long time partners CNES will join us on the next step in our journey to Mars,” Bolden said, “We’re paving the way for humans to visit the Red Planet and working to answer one of the key questions for all humanity: has there ever been life elsewhere?”
The NASA-CDTI-INTA agreement continues operation and coordination of the Remote Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) instrument suite and the High Gain Antenna (HGA) subsystem currently on the Curiosity rover. REMS provides important data on Mars’ weather, while the HGA provides an important communications link for transmitting data from the mission. Spain will provide the HGA subsytem for the Mars 2020 rover, as well. For the InSight lander, Spain will provide a suite of sensors called Temperature and Wind on InSight (TWINS).
“NASA is proud to continue our strong collaboration with Spain that is already producing amazing results on Mars,” Bolden said. “We look forward to this next phase of our partnership and a wealth of data about Mars, the next destination for human exploration.”
For more information about NASA’s Journey to Mars, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/mars
For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov