Cost Of Next-Generation Mars Rover 'Curiosity' Soars To $2.5 BILLION

LOS ANGELES — NASA's next-generation rover to the surface of Mars will be quite the behemoth – with a price tag to match.

Nine months before its scheduled launch, the space agency said the flagship mission has burned through its reserves and needs an extra $82 million to complete testing before liftoff.

It's the latest cost overrun to plague the Mars Science Laboratory, a nuclear-powered rover the size of a small SUV that will study whether the planet was or is still habitable.

Technical snags during development coupled with ballooning costs forced NASA to delay the launch by two years. Curiosity, as the rover is known, is now slated to lift off in late November from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

The latest price tag? $2.5 billion, making it the most expensive mission yet to Mars.

NASA broke the bad news last week to members of the planetary science subcommittee of the NASA Advisory Council, which provides input to the space agency. It blamed the latest budget woes on issues that cropped up during testing involving the rover's avionics, landing radar and drill that took more time and money than expected to fix.

Arizona State University planetary scientist Ronald Greeley, who chairs the panel, was disappointed about the latest cost increase, but still supports the mega-rover.

"We want that mission to fly," Greeley said.

The problem could have been worse, some scientists say.

The amount needed to usher Curiosity to the launch pad is relatively small compared to what's already been spent, said Arizona State University astronomer Jim Bell, who works on the long-running twin Mars rovers mission.

Still, researchers are bracing for possible cuts to their projects to cover the latest cost growth.

"It's unavoidable that there will be some pain," Bell said.

Just how much pain remains to be seen. NASA said the extra cash will come from its planetary science division, which funds everything from technology development to Mars missions to projects to the outer solar system.

Jim Green, who heads the division, said in a statement it's too soon to know what missions will be affected. He noted that "no other projects are being cancelled or delayed to provide funding" for Curiosity.

Since 2008, the project cost has skyrocketed by than $660 million, mainly because of technological and engineering hurdles, according to a report last year by the Government Accountability Office.

NASA has never landed such an advanced spacecraft on the Martian surface before. Curiosity proved to be a challenge from the outset because of its size and capability. It can drive farther than golf cart-size twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity and will carry a sophisticated suite of instruments including a rock-zapping laser.

Comments

[smolensk-lies]

06:26 AM on 02/05/2011

it would be hard pressed to pass the technological feats of the first moon rovers - which had the ability to magically bend light waves.

note the shadow cast, on pretty flat terrain, by the rover antenna at :03 - it points to about 09:30 (straight ahead being 12) . then note the antenna shadow at :08 when the rover stops - it points to nearly 12)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H4wK_zUBIk&feature=related

its either a local light source, or super advanced tech.

[jo smith456]

09:55 PM on 02/02/2011

Could have this toy made in China?

[HerodotusWept]

09:36 AM on 02/03/2011

Yeah, just let the Chinese do all of this. Can't see a problem there...

[ThinkCreeps]

04:23 PM on 02/02/2011

What say we pull out of Afghanistan four hours early to cover the overrun? Or pull out a whole week early to buy another one.

[oldmole1861]

09:25 AM on 02/07/2011

Exactly! The cost of the project is a fraction of one percent of the pentagon budget, and it is going for something that adds to humanity rather than putting more murderous-toys at the disposal of politicians.

[Equinator]

01:34 PM on 02/02/2011

I think we can put off exploring Mars for a little while.

[HerodotusWept]

02:51 PM on 02/02/2011

That's right, who needs wonder and scientific progress when you have so many investment bankers struggling just to make the rent on their 3rd summer home. The gall of these scientists trying to make life better for all of mankind... Don't they know there is profit to be made and poor people to disenfranchise!?!?

[Jimbo23]

03:46 PM on 02/02/2011

Ding! Nice one

[jsarets]

04:17 PM on 02/02/2011

On a practical note, there is a "use it or lose it" factor at work here.

This is the kind of enterprise that thrives on the skills and experience of teams that work toward the same engineering objectives over their careers. Once you stop the developmental momentum and lose that talent, restarting the program is a lot like starting from scratch.

I'll come out and say it: NASA has forgotten how to develop a launch vehicle. They haven't developed any kind of launch vehicle since the 1970s, and they haven't developed a conventional launch vehicle since the 1960s. Things they used to know how to design way back in the mid 1950s, like common bulkhead tank sets for cryogenic propellants, are now considered too risky to attempt.

NASA stopped developing launch vehicles, and now they have to learn all over again, to the point where they won't be able to reconfigure the Shuttle propulsion stack into a conventional launch vehicle within a $12B budget and a 6-year schedule.

You can't just put this stuff off for a little while and expect to jump right back into it as if nothing ever changed. Use it or lose it. If we don't keep going, we'll have to start all over again at great cost.

[coffeeparty]

12:26 PM on 02/02/2011

$2.5 billion? Repeal the bush tax cuts for the rich.

[netzwerg]

12:20 PM on 02/02/2011

Cool stuff, nuclear powered mars rover. I hope it works and does not crash at landing.

[HerodotusWept]

08:42 AM on 02/02/2011

$2.5 Billion? Lets put that into context...

Americans spent $29.1 billion in 2007 on CANDY
They also spent $2.5 billion at Wendy's in 2007
H ell, Americans spent $18.5 billion in 2007 on Health Club Memberships!

[ThinkCreeps]

04:20 PM on 02/02/2011

Seriously that's $18.5bn well spent, they very much need to get to the gym.

[MTGradwell]

08:37 AM on 02/02/2011

The total cost of designing, building, sending and operating the Spirit and Opportunity rovers has been under a billion. Both those rovers are still working after six years of operation, though Spirit has been stuck in soft soil since May 2009. Since much of that cost will have been for R&D, Nasa for $2.5 billion could probably have placed a dozen rovers on Mars by now simply by replicating the Spirit and Opportunity design exactly.

Instead we have just one new rover, still at least nine months from launch and massively overrunning on costs. If it fails, as most Mars missions do, the whole $2.5 billion will be down the drain.

Typical Martian ground seems to consist of a thin crust covering an extremely soft, dusty soil. It's very easy for a heavy rover to break through the crust and get stuck, as both Spirit and Opportunity did (Opportunity got stuck in 2005, but was able to free itself after a couple of months of patient manoeuvring). Curiosity weighs five times as much as either Spirit or Opportunity. I'd really like it to succeed, but my guess is that it'll trundle for a few yards at most before getting stuck.

Far better, in my opinion, would be *lighter* rovers, dropped in pairs so if one got stuck the other could help it out. One could be scouting out the land ahead while the other paused to examine an interesting rock. Lots of eggs in lots of baskets.

[jsarets]

04:03 PM on 02/02/2011

The MERs don't have the scientific equipment we need to further classify the substances found on Mars. In their impressive mission duration on Mars, controllers have extract as much data as they can from the hardware we have on those rovers. 

Is there value in landing additional MER vehicles in other locations on Mars? Perhaps, but a lot of the places we would like to go are more challenging for a small solar-power rover, which brings me to the most important lesson learned from the MER problem:

Operating solar-powered hardware on the Martian surface is highly limiting and subject to seasonal and chance variations in weather conditions which necessitate great caution in maintaining keep-alive power as the top operational priority.

MER was stalled by winter seasons and by vast storms that covered their solar panels and tires in dust while they sat stationary in minimum power modes. We were lucky to keep them alive. At times during the dust storms, Spirit was down below 1% of design power, and controllers were forced to shut down heaters that were thought to be critical.

MSL has a radioisotope thermal generator that will provide many times more power for at least 14 years, through winters and dust storms. We won't need to be so cautious about power management. We'll have plenty of power all the time to conduct an active exploration program. We can operate MSL rovers near the Martian poles where we know there are large quantities of water ice.

The problem with traction on Mars was an iron sulfate regolith which has very little cohesion. We had difficulty replicating the problem on the ground because of the difference in gravity. Controllers have concluded that a heavier rover with larger tires would have more traction.  And a lot of lessons have been learned about tire design for Mars rovers.

The MSL design is the future of Mars rovers. The marginal cost of further copies will be significantly less than the initial flight unit, and if we're ever going to mount a manned mission to Mars, this is the kind of rover platform we'll need: nuclear-powered and large enough to move regolith and hardware.

[NWBrunette]

11:19 PM on 02/01/2011

We can't spend 2.5 billion on science. We need 80 billion at least so we can give more tax breaks to the rich! Good grief.

[kinogod]

10:41 PM on 02/01/2011

This is such an awe inspiring exciting mission with new landing technology that is amazing. Imagining this landing alone -- the tech and cooridination and automation should make our country proud. Then to deliver via this ground-breaking delivery system a sports car sized mobile laboratory -- it's too exciting for words. The chance to explore another world with a depth and breadth unimaginable only 30 years ago. This is the stuff of adventure in a world devoid too often of it. Dream big, grasp the brass ring. Tax money must do all sorts of things for the people, but this task -- well it is reflective of a nation of adventurers. Let's not put out the spark and dream small. This mission leaves me in wonder and in awe. I can 't wait.

[Trout007]

08:26 PM on 02/01/2011

One big problem is when the program was started in 2003 the projects most likely didn't take into account the insane inflation we have had in recent years. This is one reason long term projects are difficult to do when you are funded year to year.

How many people here would have traded the Iraq War for a Moon and Mars Base because that is what it cost. About $700 Billion spent at $70 Billion for the last 10 years would have more than tripled NASA's budget and we would have humans living on a permanent Lunar Base today. Plus all of the technological advances we would have made to do it. Plus we may have killed a few astronauts but not 5000.

[jsarets]

09:26 PM on 02/01/2011

Most of the inflation is in project management, and probably the single most explosive growth in cost has been, ironically, in cost estimation and associated systems engineering line items.

[Gus Stephens]

06:57 PM on 02/01/2011

I love NASA, but I wish their missions didn't have such a extreme cost.

[NWBrunette]

11:23 PM on 02/01/2011

Do billions to unnecessary wars and a massively bloated military industrial complex bother you as much? How about billions and billions and billions in taxpayer subsidies to the wealthy elite? Just checking. Seems to me in the grand scheme of things NASA's costs, compared to it's benefits, outweighs by light-years much of the rest of the nonsense that our society seems to value.

[HerodotusWept]

03:00 PM on 02/02/2011

See my post above, but you should really try to put numbers into context if the cost worries you so much. Americans spent more money on wine ($3 billion) than this project. Americans also spent $3 billion last year on knock-off cosmetics.

And we wonder why this country is so far behind the rest of the world in science and math... Could it be our priorities?

[Kmuzu]

06:46 PM on 02/01/2011

Gee let's see .. H P doesn't seem to care about 1 trillion for the Iraq war but a couple of billion for science .. up in arms.

[ivanalkilovic]

05:47 PM on 02/01/2011

Well, if this mission yields half as much valuable information as Spirit and Opportunity, it will be well worth it!

[HerodotusWept]

03:04 PM on 02/02/2011

Here Here. I wonder how much profit was generated just by the advances made in satellite communications from the last few years of the space program. I would wager more than enough to pay for this project dozens of times over. Not to mention the simple wonder that learning about the origin of the solar system provides... A more worthy investment is something I have a hard time imagining...

[Tyrione]

05:12 PM on 02/01/2011

Alicia Chang: Spare us the fear story of it being an unnecessary expense. This is critical to all science.