$9-603-083$

REV: JANUARY $15,2004$

ALAN MACCORMACK

JAY WYNN

Mission to Mars $($A$)$

Firouz Naderi, the newly appointed Mars program manager, looked up from his chair to the photos of Mars that adorned the conference room wall. The photos from the Mars Global Surveyor expedition had stunned the scientific world, with pictures of what looked like natural gullies cut by water, perhaps $1$ million or $2$ million years ago or perhaps as recently as yesterday. Where there is water, there is usually a good chance of life, he mused.

But today, on a warm and sunny afternoon in the spring of $2000,$ Naderi had other things on his mind. He was meeting with Frank Jordan, program manager for Advanced Studies, and Chris Jones, director, Planetary Flight Projects, to discuss the future of the Mars exploration program. A few months earlier, NASA had been stunned by the loss of the Mars Polar Lander $($MPL$)$ spacecraft just minutes before it was due to touch down on the planet. It was the second mission failure in $10$ weeks, coming on the heels of the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter $($MCO$)$ in September $1999.$ As a result, Naderi, Jordan, and Jones faced some tough decisions.

Their most immediate concern surrounded the two missions that were in development for launch in $12$ months. The two spacecraft$-$an orbiter and a lander$-$were being developed using the same "faster, better, cheaper" philosophy that had been used for both MPL and MCO. Furthermore, the designs of the $2001$ craft used many of the same components as the $1998$ craft. Given these risks, NASA had to decide whether to recommend proceeding with the development of both spacecraft, whether to cancel one and devote extra resources to the other, or whether to cancel them both. Given both had already reached the construction stage, it would be a difficult decision.

In addition to deciding the fate of the $2001$ missions, the group faced a potentially more critical issue: the need to develop a long$-$term plan for Mars exploration that would stand the test of time. This would require assessing the appropriate scope and objectives for individual missions, as well as defining how these missions should be integrated into a coherent program. Naderi remarked: