NeMO, NASA’s Next Mars Orbiter

When the current NASA’s orbiters around Mars, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and 2001 Mars Odyssey stop functioning, a new telecommunication relay support will be needed. Pursuing the non-secondary aim of avoiding to press the MAVEN science orbiter into use as a backup, NASA intends to dispatch the spacecraft to the red planet in September 2022. In July 2016 the agency issued an RFP for 400 million dollars, selecting five aerospace companies (Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Northrop Grumman, Orbital ATK, Boeing and Space Systems/Loral) to conduct concept studies, that will be managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Back in July NASA declared it’s ready to proceed with final design and fabrication of an advanced rover that would be launched in the summer of 2020 and land on Mars in February 2021. The new Mars orbiter would be thought to work together with Mars 2020 rover in ‘shipping’ Mars soil samples back to Earth.

Among the key features of the new orbiter under study there are therefore solar electric ion drive engines, better solar arrays, and broadband laser communications (optic communication) between Earth and Mars. And obviously the sample rendezvous capture and return capability. The samples that would be cached by the Mars 2020 rover would be placed in Mars orbit by a future Mars ascent vehicle. From there the orbiter would send the samples back to Earth.

The current fleet status (not considering other nations’ orbiters such as ESA’ Mars Express and India’s Mangalyaan) is not really in an optimal condition. One of 2001 Mars Odyssey’s four reaction wheels — used to keep the spacecraft properly oriented — failed in 2012, and ever since, the craft has made do with three. The Mars Atmospheric Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, orbiter that arrived in martian orbit in September to study the planet’s upper atmosphere could serve as a backup communications relay in a pinch, but NASA would prefer not to take that route.

This interesting conceptual study for the Next Mars Orbiter PDF shows a very visual overview of the Mars Orbiter 2022. Worth a read.