(CNN) -- Life on Mars?
That's the question facing the NASA team responsible for putting together the objectives for 2020 rover mission to Mars.
"We're still on the quest
to answer the grand question: Is there life somewhere else in the
universe?" John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science,
told reporters Tuesday in a teleconference.
Previous missions to Mars
have found definitive signs that water once flowed in a crater and rock
samples that show signs of clay minerals.
"We really needed to go
back to the surface, and go to the next stage. ... Did Mars ever have
life?" Grunsfeld said as he previewed a 160-page report prepared by the Mars 2020 Science Definition Team, a group assembled by NASA to outline the objectives of the mission.
The 2020 rover mission to
Mars is considered essential to meeting President Barack Obama's
challenge to send a manned mission to the planet in the 2030s.
Among the objectives of
the 2020 rover mission will be the search for signs of life, the
collection of samples to possibly be returned to Earth and testing
technology that may allow for a manned mission to Mars.
Astronauts would face high radiation on Mars trip
"We want to be able to
seek signs of life: Had life been there, did it leave a mark?" said Jack
Mustard, a member of the development team and a chair and professor of
geological sciences at Brown University.
As part of the
preparation for the mission, NASA plans to conduct an open competition.
It is planned by NASA for the space technology and scientific
instruments that will be carried by the rover and used in the mission,
according to the report.
In addition to the 2020
mission, NASA is scheduled to launch the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile
Evolution mission in November 2013. That mission is set to explore the
compounds of the Martian atmosphere, which scientists say will offer a
glimpse into the planet's climate and habitability.
In 2016, a collaboration between the European Space Agency and Russian Federal Space Agency is expected to launch an ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter -- a mission to map methane and other gases on Mars.
The European and Russian space agencies plan to launch the ExoMars rover in 2018.
"What we have over the
next 10 years is a very comprehensive series of international missions
to Mars," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division
in Washington.
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