Mars rover how much did it cost

By clicking the "I accept" button, you consent to the use of these cookies. After a mammoth million mile journey, NASA's Perseverance rover safely touched down safely on the surface of Mars. The six-wheeled rover landed inside the Jerezo Crater which is thought to have been a huge lake billions of years ago. It will examine different types of rocks such as clays and carbonates to determine whether they contain traces of microbial life.

The vehicle is equipped with a host of scientific instruments and even a helicopter drone called Ingenuity which is set to attempt to first powered flight on another planet. Exploring the Red Planet is a costly undertaking. All previous misisons to Mars have cost billions of dollars and Perseverance is no different. And the more people on a project, the higher its costs. Mars Perseverance was designed and built over the better course of a decade.

Its prime mission is set to last for at least 2 years. The project began in and its prime mission ends in any mission extensions—while likely—are considered optional and thus additive to the life-cycle cost.

The following chart shows that annual spending on the project varied dramatically. Mars Perseverance rover spending by fiscal year. Amounts after the current year are official projections. Mars 's contributions to the overall program include attempting to determine whether life existed on Mars, exploring the Red Planet's climate and geology, and preparing for possible human missions in the s, according to NASA. The agency's Red Planet science-exploration program, including Mars , is "strongly supported by the community," with each mission to the Red Planet building upon the knowledge of past missions.

Indeed, in the rover sequence alone, Mars will be the fifth NASA rover to reach the surface of Mars , after Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity, which each probed aspects of the planet's watery past. As a result of holding the review early, new and highly complex developments were not stable at the time of the design review. The result was cost growth on two instruments: one on the rover's entry, descent and landing system which faced unexpected integration challenges and a technology-demonstration instrument to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen , which proved tougher to develop than expected.

By March , the mission was facing even more cost growth only 16 months before its expected launch window, which opens in July This cost growth was rumored for months in the planetary science community but became clear only in NASA's fiscal year budget proposal, according to SpaceNews.

At the time, NASA said it would provide a more precise overrun figure around the same time the agency releases its fiscal operating plan. That was released last month but is still going through the appropriations process in the House and Senate. It was an exhausting process for the scientists at NASA to circle in on a location where the Mars rover was supposed to land. This was a tedious process as Mars has abundant evidence of water and organic molecules, making it difficult to pick one single spot.

The reason the scientists chose the Jezero Crater was to show how water periodically appeared and then disappeared on the Martian surface. Scientists believe that the planet lost its water because the atmosphere grew too thin. But their research indicates that around 3.