November 9 2009 (BBC News) - "The US and European space agencies have signed the "letter of intent" that ties together their Mars programmes.

The agreement, which was penned in Washington DC, gives the green light to scientists and engineers to begin the joint planning of Red Planet missions.
The union will start with a European-led orbiter in 2016, and continue with surface rovers in 2018, and then perhaps a network of landers in 2018.
The ultimate aim is a mission to return Mars rock and soils to Earth labs.

The Washington document was signed by the heads of the agencies, Nasa administrator Charles Bolden and Esa director-general Jean-Jacques Dordain.
The Mars Joint Exploration Initiative (Meji) has been under discussion for several months, with the key elements - covering scope, division of responsibility and financing - gradually falling into place. The letter of intent puts the initiative on a more formal footing.

The US and Europe have taken the view that they can achieve more together scientifically at the Red Planet if they combine their expertise.
And with both parties' current Mars programmes also experiencing financial pressures, the shared approach means the exploration schedule of a mission every two years can be maintained.
Esa's member states have already pledged 850m euros towards a Red Planet venture. They will need to take that figure up to about a billion euros to properly fund Meji activities.
The existence of this extra funding, and which European nations might provide it, will have to be established at a council meeting of the agency in mid-December (although the subscription opportunity will officially stay open until the end of the year).

"The important thing I think is that the member states have bought into the ideas; I'm not expecting any shocks," Professor David Southwood, Esa's director of science and robotics, told BBC News.
Professor Southwood has put together the joint initiative with his opposite number at Nasa, Dr Ed Weiler."

Link to BBC News article.

From my perspective, this changes a number of mission scenarios. Including:

The rebranding of the US-led "Mars Science Orbiter" into the ESA-led "Mars Trace Gas Orbiter".
The moving back of the launch date of the "ExoMars Rover" from 2016 to 2018 and adding an additional "ExoMars Static Lander"
The creation of the US-led "Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Cacher" to launch in 2018.
The possibility of a group of very small low-cost Mars Landers focused on geophysics and the enviroment (2020).
And the positioning of a Mars Sample Return Mission in the 2020's.

- Luke.

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- Luke.

Well NASA is stopping Spirit recovery attempts and trying to position the rover to get as much energy as possible for the Martian winter. Dame on Mars for six years only expected to run only 90 days..in that time lost 2 wheels and had arm motor problems. What a testement to what unlimited money and German as well as others, scientist can do..WOW. Best wishes for Opportunity.

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Do WHAT THO WILL SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW.

THE ONLY PATH WORTH TRAVELING IS THE PATH WITH HEART.
Proud member of TEAM CARL SAGAN

I think it's amazing those rovers have held out this long but more missions such as them are needed. It'd be great too if they decided on some manned missions before 2030. I'd like not to be a grandad by the time it happens!

Hello Everyone,

Way to many threads on Mars. I'm just going to post this link here. It should blow your mind, maybe???





Mars as you've never seen it before: The colossal ice walls that show another side of the Red Planet

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 5:58 PM on 22nd March 2010

It looks like a filmmaker's apocalyptic vision of Earth following a devastating natural disaster.

But this colossal ice formation is actually a portion of the wall terraces of a huge crater on Mars.

Approximately 37 miles in diameter, a section of the Mojave Crater in the planet's Xanthe Terra region has been digitally mapped by Nasa scientists.

The result is this digital terrain model that was generated from a stereo pair of images and offers a synthesized, oblique view of a 2.5-mile portion of the crater's wall terraces.

The sheer depth of the crater - about 1.6 miles - demonstrates that Mojave has experienced little infilling or erosion.

The result offers scientists a tantalising glimpse of what a very large complex crater looks like on Mars because it remains so fresh while most others - especially this size - have been affected by erosion, sedimentary infilling and overprinting by other geologic processes.

Such a fresh crater provides an insight into the impact process.

This view, in which the vertical dimension is exaggerated three-fold compared with horizontal dimensions, shows the ponding of material backed up behind massive wall-terrace blocks of bedrock.

Hundreds of impact craters on Mars have similarly ponded features with pitted surfaces. These 'pitted ponds' are thought to result when material melted by the crater-causing impacts is captured behind the wall terraces.

The portion of the Mojave Crater's north-western edge shown here spans about 2.5 miles in width halfway between the bottom and top of the image. The view is toward the north.

Mojave is one of the freshest large craters on Mars. A survey of its features indicates very few overprinting craters on them, and an analysis of that infrequency suggests the crater may be as young as about ten million years, very young for a crater of this size.

The fans and channels hint that impacts such as Mojave's may have unleashed water or water-ice from the subsurface to flow across the surface and, perhaps, condense as rain or snow for a brief period of Martian time.

This further suggests that early climate on Mars could have been heavily influenced by the intense bombardment about 3.9billion years ago when impacts creating craters Mojave's size and far larger were more common.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1259813/Mars-Ice-walls-Red-Planet.html

ps...Mod. can move this link around.

Studies show more evidence of water on moon, Mars

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ice deposits at least 6 feet (2 metres) thick can be found in some small craters on the moon, researchers reported on Monday in one of two studies showing more evidence of water on the moon and Mars.

The second study suggested that ice has recently melted and re-frozen on Mars, widening some of the characteristic gullies on its surface.

The two studies add to the political and scientific debate about how best to explore our solar system and the universe -- with missions that include human crews, or experiments using robots and remote surveys.

The administration of President Barack Obama last month said it would cancel the Constellation program to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 after a review found the $108 billion program was underfunded and already off-track to meet most of its goals.

Obama's plan is to contract with private companies to do some of the work needed to investigate Mars, as well as asteroids, using robots, remote sensors and perhaps some astronauts.

In one of the two studies released on Monday, Paul Spudis of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston and colleagues analyzed measurements from India's Chandrayaan spacecraft to find evidence of thick ice deposits in some permanently shaded craters on the moon.

"As the moon has been bombarded with water-bearing objects such as comets and meteorites and implanted with solar wind hydrogen over geological time, some of this material must have made its way into these cold, dark areas," they wrote in Geophysical Research Letters.

They measure something called circular polarization ratio to show either the surface there is unusually rough, or there are between 6 and 10 feet (2 and 3 metres) of ice there.

The second study showed that 6-foot (2-metre) wide gully on Mars had become nearly 400 feet (120 metres) longer over two years. Continued... Dennis Reiss of the Institute for Planetology at Westfalische Wilhelms-Universitat in Munster, Germany, and colleagues said the best explanation is the melting of small amounts of water ice.

Photographs show dark patches in the gully, as well as some smaller, new channels, they reported in the same journal. It may get warm enough at the surface to melt water on Mars, they added.

In September, several teams reported clear evidence of water, likely frozen, on the desert surfaces of both the moon and Mars and researchers have also seen it snow on Mars.

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-47638120100412