Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

This artist’s rendering depicts NASA’s Mars 2020 rover, with its robotic arm extended.
Credit: NASA/JPL-CALTECH

Deciding on where best to plunk down NASA’s Mars 2020 on the Red Planet rover is not an easy choice, and is spot-on with controversy.

On one hand, the scientific bonus of having a souped-up mega rover meet Martian real estate is one thing. But it turns out that the Mars 2020 stands as a watershed moment, perhaps a bridge to nowhere in Mars exploration planning for NASA.

Where will NASA’s next Mars rover explore? Artwork depicts meeting of Mars machinery: The Mars 2020 rover wheels up to the dead, stuck-in-sand Spirit rover in the Columbia Hills.
Credit: James Rice/Joel Hagen/NASA

Multi-Mars probes

Meanwhile, putting aside the tossing of America’s next rover onto the Red Planet, there are other similar efforts in that same time period heading for a Mars landing in 2021, expressly the European Space Agency’s ExoMars 2020 rover, a Chinese Mars lander, as well as Elon Musk’s entrepreneurial enterprise that now intends to lob its first uncrewed Dragon capsule to the Martian surface that same year.

For more details on the NASA Mars 2020 rover mission, discussion and debate, please go to my new Space.com story:

Should NASA’s Next Mars Rover Tread New Ground?

March 1, 2017 07:00am ET

http://www.space.com/35866-nasa-mars-2020-rover-landing-site.html