Американо-европейская реинкарнация "Экзомарса"

Автор Liss, 02.08.2010 20:48:20

« назад - далее »

0 Пользователи и 1 гость просматривают эту тему.

Salo

http://www.spacenews.com/civil/110418-single-rover-mars-mission-2018.html
ЦитироватьMon, 18 April, 2011
U.S., Europe Plan Single-rover Mars Mission for 2018[/size]
By Amy Svitak

    WASHINGTON — NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) will scale back plans to send a pair of rovers to Mars in 2018 and instead build a single vehicle that would drill into the red planet's surface and store soil samples for eventual return to Earth, according to NASA officials.

    Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division in NASA's Science Mission Directorate here, said the agency could contribute roughly $1.2 billion to the mission while also covering the cost to launch the craft.

    Speaking to members of the NASA Advisory Council's planetary science subcommittee April 18, Green said ESA member states are expected to decide by late May whether or not to proceed with the basic architecture concept, which would combine science objectives planned for NASA's Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Cacher (MAX-C) with Europe's ExoMars rover, both of which were slated to launch in 2018.

    "Our merged rover's design leverages both partners' goals and capabilities and assets," Green told the subcommittee, adding that NASA would remain focused on developing a caching system capable of collecting soil samples from the martian surface, a top priority in the U.S. National Research Council's most recent 10-year survey of planetary science goals released in March.

    Although the survey listed a robotic sample-return mission to Mars as its top priority, it recommended that NASA pursue the estimated $3.5 billion MAX-C rover only if the price-tag could be reduced to $2.5 billion, an amount NASA says is still too steep for a planetary science budget that is expected to decline in the coming years.

    With the U.S. contribution to the joint campaign expected to be around $1 billion, the two sides returned to the drawing board in early April. As a result, Green said, "a number of things were decided that will enable us to bring the costs down significantly that were suggested in the decadal," including the option of achieving U.S. and European science objectives with a single rover.

    Green said a joint engineering working group established April 6 is drafting a technical solution to the joint mission objectives given NASA's funding constraints. In addition, a joint science team is being formed to establish mission objectives and requirements for the 2018 campaign.

    Doug McCuistion, who heads NASA's Mars exploration program, emphasized that the two sides are still sorting out who brings what to the table. However, he told the subcommittee that NASA would provide the rover's descent stage, based on the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission slated to launch to the red planet later this year, while ESA would likely develop a drill that was originally slated to fly on Europe's ExoMars rover.

    "We're going to look and see what the best combination of capabilities and assets are and how we go about building a joint rover," McCuistion said. "It's not going to look like ExoMars, it's not going to look like MSL; it's going to be something new."
"Были когда-то и мы рысаками!!!"


Salo

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=space&id=news/awst/2011/06/06/AW_06_06_2011_p30-330685.xml&headline=Funding%20Stymies%20European-U.S.%20Mars%20Mission
ЦитироватьFunding Stymies European-U.S. Mars Mission[/size]

 Jun 7, 2011
  By Amy Svitak
Washington


European industry cost estimates are putting pressure on the ExoMars program while NASA budget cuts are forcing a redesign of key elements of the flagship U.S.-European cooperative space project.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is negotiating €200 million ($287 million) in hardware cost reductions with European contractors supporting a multibillion-euro ESA-NASA mission that would send robotic science probes and terrestrial rovers in search of life on Mars by the end of the decade.

As part of an effort to impose a €1 billion cost cap on Europe's commitment to ExoMars, ESA set a €575 million ceiling on industry hardware development. The agency also identified specific pots of money for each element of the two-pronged mission, which would send a methane-detecting satellite and technology demonstrator to Mars in 2016, followed in 2018 by a surface rover capable of drilling and caching soil samples for eventual return to Earth.

However, according to an April summary of the ExoMars program status, cost estimates presented by a European industry consortium led by prime contractor Thales Alenia Space Italy came in "significantly above target."

ESA's hardware development cost targets include: €280 million for the ESA-led mission in 2016, which comprises the methane-sniffing ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and a small Entry, Descent and Landing Demonstrator Module (EDM) capable of monitoring mission-critical systems; and €240 million for the ExoMars rover, Europe's contribution to the NASA-led 2018 mission designed to drill beneath the Martian surface.

However, ESA says the overall cost needs to be reduced by €250 million, according to the summary, which indicates ESA is negotiating revised cost estimates in an effort to glean €100 million in savings from the program's largest industry partners. Thales Alenia Space Italy is building the EDM, Thales Alenia Space France is developing the Trace Gas Orbiter spacecraft and Astrium U.K. is designing the 2018 ExoMars rover. Another €100 million in cost savings could be achieved by taking a similar approach with subcontractors supporting the primes. ESA could also lower overall program costs by shifting €50 million in management fees to help pay for hardware development, the summary says.

ESA's effort to impose the €1 billion cost cap coincides with NASA's decision to reduce its planned $2.2 billion ExoMars contribution by roughly $700 million in response to the Obama administration's proposal to lower the space agency's planetary science budget in a 2012 spending plan sent to Congress in February. As a result, the agencies are now focused on keeping hardware development for the 2016 Trace Gas Orbiter mission on track while redesigning the 2018 rovers mission.

Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, says ESA and NASA tentatively decided in March to cut costs by combining the primary science goals of the 2018 mission, meshing NASA's MAX-C Explorer/Cacher drone and ESA's drill-equipped ExoMars rover into a single vehicle capable of carrying out mission objectives critical to both.

"We've had an engineering working group and a science team hot at this since the beginning of April," McCuistion notes, adding that ESA and NASA expect to devise a revamped architecture for the 2018 mission by year-end. "Then we'll look through all the elements of that rover and say, 'Here's how we need to divide this up, what each group can provide based on things like technical expertise and budget and schedule.'"

The joint science and engineering teams will have their work cut out for them as they return to the drawing board this summer. McCuistion points out, though, that some elements of the proposed single-rover design are preordained, including a plan to make the most of propulsion and descent capabilities built for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, a truck-sized rover that is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral AFS in November.

"NASA will be utilizing build-to-print MSL systems, so the cruise stage and the descent stage will essentially be copies of what we'll be flying for MSL," McCuistion says, adding that even though the revamped 2018 architecture is to be based on ESA's ExoMars rover design, considerable changes are needed to make it compatible with MSL's landing system, which requires that the rover land on its wheels rather than on a platform, as envisioned under the original dual-rover plan.

In the meantime, ESA and NASA are pressing ahead with implementation plans for the Trace Gas Orbiter. Development of the spacecraft's five science instruments, which will perform remote observations of the Martian atmosphere to detect methane and other gases that could signal past or present life, is well under way. NASA is responsible for four sensors and ESA is contributing the fifth.

In addition, ESA expects this month to announce winning proposals for a sensor and instrumentation suite to be hosted on the EDM vehicle, a technology demonstrator designed to prove European industry's ability to perform a controlled landing on the surface of Mars while monitoring key mission technologies, including thermal protection, parachute and liquid-propulsion braking systems.

ESA allowed ExoMars funding to lapse in April, however, while the agency evaluated the impact of NASA's funding shortfall. Since then, an ESA policy-making body—dubbed the Program Board for Human Spaceflight, Microgravity and Exploration, which oversees ExoMars—approved the single-rover concept for 2018, green-lighting ESA's plan to implement the manufacturing phase of the Trace Gas Orbiter and EDM hardware this summer.

"They were just given authority last week to go ahead with the industry contracts and they plan on that for July," McCuistion says, adding that as ESA completes contract negotiations with industry for the manufacturing and test phase of the ExoMars program in the coming weeks, the Trace Gas Orbiter mission is expected to remain on track.

"For 2016, we're getting close enough that we certainly wouldn't want to wait" much longer to initiate hardware production, he says.

ESA Concept
"Были когда-то и мы рысаками!!!"

Космос-3794

ESA и NASA анонсировали программу научных исследований запланированных на борту посадочного демонстратора миссии ExoMars 2016. Зонд исследует атмосферу на этапе снижения и впервые проведет измерения электрических полей на поверхности Марса. Также запланированы сеансы метеоизмерений и цветная съемка поверхности (в течении 2-4 суток).

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMLEFRHPOG_index_0.html

Salo

http://www.spacenews.com/civil/110622-esa-press-ahead-exomars.html
ЦитироватьWed, 22 June, 2011
Despite French Objections, ESA Seeks To Press Ahead on ExoMars[/size]
By Peter B. de Selding

    LE BOURGET, France — The European Space Agency (ESA) will proceed with a June 29-30 vote on a two-part Mars exploration plan with NASA despite likely French opposition because any delay would risk missing a key launch date, ESA Director-General Jean-Jacques Dordain said June 22.

    Dordain said ESA's ExoMars contractors must begin work on a Mars orbiter, set for launch in 2016 aboard a NASA-provided Atlas 5 rocket, in July if they are to complete work in time to meet that schedule.

    The orbiter will provide a crucial telecommunications relay function for the second ESA-NASA ExoMars mission, a jointly developed rover whose design and work-share distribution are yet to be determined, slated for launch in 2018.

    That uncertainty has caused the French space agency, CNES, to call for a delay in approving full funding for ExoMars until a clearer picture develops of how much the NASA-ESA rover will cost.

    CNES President Yannick d'Escatha said June 21 that France's priority is the 2018 rover mission, and that the doubts about this mission's contours under NASA-ESA management argue for an increased budget.

    With ESA's share of the two-part ExoMars mission budget capped at 1 billion euros ($1.4 billion), d'Escatha suggested that the 2016 mission should be scaled back, with the savings directed to preserving the scientific value of the 2018 mission.

    France voted against a late-May ESA committee agreement to sign off on the ExoMars mission with NASA despite the many unknowns about the rover cooperation. A majority of ESA members agreed that delaying the start on the 2016 mission any further would raise the threat that mission, which includes an entry, descent and landing demonstration package, would be late on arrival and miss the 2016 launch date.

    In a June 22 interview, Dordain agreed with this assessment. He said ESA is proceeding with plans to ask its Industrial Policy Committee, which is the final step to approving agency funding, to clear the ExoMars funds when it meets June 29-30.

    The Industrial Policy Committee operates by simple majority, Dordain said, meaning it does not need French approval to OK the budget for ExoMars.

    "I fully understand the French position," Dordain said. "But industry has told me I have already wasted three months and cannot wait to approve funding for the 2016 mission beyond July 1. If I delay agreeing to ExoMars financing until questions about the rover are settled, industry could later tell me I am responsible for their missing the 2016 launch window. I do not want this."

    Dordain said that what the Industrial Policy Committee can do to assuage the concerns of France, and of any other nation worried that the 2018 mission may evolve in unacceptable ways, is to slow-drip funds for the 2018 mission through a series of limited-liability contracts and authorizations to proceed.

    Dordain said that for the Industrial Policy Committee to decide ExoMars, ESA first needs a letter from NASA attesting to the U.S. agency's commitment to the 2018 rover mission. That letter is expected by June 28.

    With that letter in hand, Dordain said, he will ask the Industrial Policy Committee to approve ExoMars funding, with full metal-cutting financing for the 2016 but a slower disbursement of funding for 2018.

    Dordain also said there may be a possibility of reducing the size of the 2016 mission's 600-kilogram entry, descent and landing package to save money, with the savings going to the 2018 mission.
"Были когда-то и мы рысаками!!!"

m-s Gelezniak


Извращенцы. Через попу, но зато посвоему.
Шли бы Вы все на Марс, что ли...

Salo

http://www.spacenews.com/civil/110630-esa-defer-work-mars-orbiter.html
ЦитироватьThu, 30 June, 2011
ESA Forced To Defer Full-scale Work on 2016 Mars Orbiter[/size]
By Peter B. de Selding

    PARIS — The European Space Agency (ESA) on June 30 withdrew its proposal to begin full-scale work on a 2016 Mars orbiter mission with NASA following receipt of a letter from NASA's administrator saying the U.S. agency could not commit to a companion 2018 Mars rover mission, a senior ESA official said June 30.

    The decision by ESA Director-General Jean-Jacques Dordain to remove the ExoMars contract decision from the agenda of ESA's Industrial Policy Committee, which met June 29-30, illustrates the continued instability of the joint ESA-NASA Mars exploration program that in principle was decided two years ago.

    Briefing reporters here, Eric Morel de Westgaver, ESA's director for procurement, financial operations and legal affairs, said ESA coupled its decision not to approve the full contract for the 2016 telecommunications relay orbiter with an agreement to fund just enough work on it so as to be able to throttle up to full contract work soon enough to make the 2016 launch date.

    ESA will begin immediate negotiations with Thales Alenia Space of France and Italy, the prime contractor for the ExoMars orbiter, to determine the minimum payments needed right away to keep the orbiter on track for the 2016 launch date, Morel de Westgaver said. "No irreversible paths" were taken at the meeting of the Industrial Policy Committee (IPC), he said.

    ESA, he said, has authority under an existing ExoMars contract to direct limited monies for another couple of months. He declined to disclose the maximum budget authorization the agency has at its disposal.

    At ESA, both the 2016 telecommunications orbiter — with its trace-gas sensor and an entry, descent and landing demonstration package — and the 2018 rover are considered a single mission called ExoMars, which is budgeted at 1 billion euros ($1.4 billion). In the contracting sense, the 2016 mission cannot be given full go-ahead funding until issues surrounding the 2018 mission are resolved.

    Those issues are several. ESA and NASA since this spring have been working on a joint rover mission for 2018 following NASA's announcement that its budget does not permit it to provide a separate U.S.-built rover to be launched alongside ESA's rover.

    A joint rover is being designed, but an exact determination of which side will provide what elements will not be made until this fall. That has led some of ESA's ExoMars contributing nations, notably France and Britain, to ask that the 2016 mission be put on hold, or cut back, to preserve the maximum amount of resources for the 2018 rover launch. The U.K. Space Agency in particular had expressed its desire that its ExoMars contribution not be used to place British industry in a junior partner's position relative to U.S. industry for a rover that, until recently, was supposed to be built in Britain.

    ESA officials have said they cannot put 2016 on hold without raising the risk that the mission will not be ready for a 2016 launch. Both Dordain and ESA Science Director Alvaro Gimenez said in separate interviews the week of June 22 that Thales Alenia Space needed to get cracking on the 2016 orbiter immediately, especially given the program delays since April as ESA has digested NASA's abandonment of a U.S.-built rover for 2018.

    Dordain had said that the urgency of moving full-speed ahead on the 2016 mission was such that he would, if necessary, use ESA's procedures at the IPC meeting to force ExoMars through to contractual authority by a simple majority vote.

    But Dordain said he could not take that step if he had not received a letter from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden reaffirming NASA's commitment to the 2018 by the time the IPC debated ExoMars.

    That letter arrived late June 29 Central European Time, Morel de Westgaver said. In it, he said, Bolden says NASA will do its utmost to be able to be able to commit to the 2018 mission by Sept. 15, when it presumably will have more clarity about its budget prospects.

    The IPC will meet Sept. 29-30 to take up the issue again, Morel de Westgaver said. [/size]
"Были когда-то и мы рысаками!!!"

Georgij

Всегда готов!

Salo

Если вкратце, то будут делать обрезание. Гугль Вам в помощь.

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=space&id=news/awst/2011/08/01/AW_08_01_2011_p43-350317.xml&headline=Europe%20Could%20Downsize%20Mars%202016%20Mission&next=0
ЦитироватьEurope Could Downsize Mars 2016 Mission[/size]

 Aug 3, 2011

  By Amy Svitak
Paris

The European Space Agency (ESA) is considering a plan to scale back or eliminate the entry, descent and landing element of a robotic science mission to Mars in 2016, a cost-saving measure that could bolster a more ambitious joint U.S.-European rover mission to the red planet two years later.

Alvaro Gimenez, ESA's director of science and robotic exploration, says Europe could save about €120 million ($174 million) if the 19-member space agency immediately abandons development of its ExoMars Entry, Descent and Landing Module (EDL), a testbed designed to demonstrate Europe's mastery of lander technology. Slated to launch in 2016, EDL is designed to be carried aboard a telecommunications satellite equipped with a methane-sniffing trace-gas sensor and a data relay capability indispensible to a subsequent ExoMars mission planned for 2018.

Of the €345 million in industrial costs ESA has budgeted for the 2016 ExoMars mission, "about €120 million could be saved" if the agency opts to scrap the 600-kg (1323-lb.) EDL tech demo, Gimenez says, though the decision to do so would need to be reached soon.

"If we wait until next year, the savings would be half," he says, adding that ESA's ExoMars industry team, lead by Thales Alenia Space of Italy and France are already working on the EDL and Mars Trace Gas Orbiter in preparation for launch in early 2016. Gimenez expects to present a range of options—including the possibility of scrapping the EDL—to ESA's human spaceflight, microgravity and exploration program board in September.

"If they tell me to [scrap] it, I'll do it, but we have to move now," he says. "If we miss the opportunity of 2016, we have a problem. I cannot keep industry around playing cards and being paid by us."

The European work is a key step in the emerging joint NASA/ESA Mars Exploration program, which ultimately hopes to return samples of Martian soil and rocks to Earth for detailed analysis. Current plans—which face funding uncertainty on both sides of the Atlantic—call for a joint rover mission in 2018 to collect and cache material for a sample-return lander to be launched later.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), set for launch as early as Nov. 25 (see p. 38 ), is designed to help scientists home in on the types of rocks they want to study first-hand. While carrying sophisticated instruments for in situ chemical analysis of material it collects robotically, the MSL will not be able to match detailed work done by human scientists.

"There's a big difference between taking a rock and grinding it up and doing a measurement on it, compared to picking a rock apart and taking each of the little mineral grains and analyzing them," says Michael Meyer, lead scientist in NASA's Mars Exploration program. "It's almost like getting a book and you shuffle the pages and try to figure out what the story is, versus you actually look at them in sequence. There are a lot of things that you can't do unless you handle the sample—thin sections, electron microscopy."

With a decision on the way forward unlikely before fall, ESA's industrial partners have slowed work on the 2016 EDL and Mars Trace Orbiter to a trickle, though ESA Project Manager Thomas Passvogel says the effort is still funded under an earlier contractual arrangement.

Scaling back or nixing the EDL would require ExoMars program managers to rearrange workshares among industrial partners, including Italy and France, which are leading EDL development.

In June, Yannick d'Escatha, head of the French space agency CNES, said France would prefer to abandon the EDL in favor of fortifying the 2018 mission with additional funds.  

"Because the 2018 mission is a priority, it needs to be protected," d'Escatha said in June. "We need to be absolutely sure that the 2018 mission will exist" with Europe's key scientific priorities for the ExoMars rover intact.

Gimenez says Europe has budgeted €1 billion for ExoMars overall, including €605 million in industrial contracts for both the 2016 and 2018 missions. However, member nations have committed just €850 million to date. The remaining €150 million needed to ensure operations and data analysis following launch is currently in flux.

"The members will only subscribe the €150 million at the ministerial meeting in 2012," Gimenez says, referring to a late 2012 meeting of ESA ministers that will set the agency's multiyear budget. "We are not going to launch something that we are not going to operate afterward. So that amount is needed. If our member states are not able to put [up] their part of the €150 million, the others will have to react, increase their percentage or we have to descope because of that."

Of the program's two largest contributors—Italy and the U.K.—only the latter has committed to fund some part of the remaining €150 million. Italy, Gimenez says, is still an unknown.

"If they cannot put in their subscription, then we may have a problem," he notes.

In addition, Gimenez argues that scrapping EDL would mean forfeiting an opportunity to demonstrate European autonomy in key technologies needed for future visits to Mars.

"It is a technology demonstration that is a complicated one, but Europe wanted to have the capability of landing by ourselves, despite the fact that we are going to land with NASA in 2018. I think it's good not to give up that technology if we are serious about exploration in the future."

Still, Gimenez says the savings could be applied to the NASA-led ExoMars mission in 2018, which is already undergoing a complete design overhaul in the face of mounting budget pressure in Washington. Designed to send an ESA rover with a drill and a science payload alongside a NASA drone equipped with a soil cacher to the red planet, the mission was scrapped in March when NASA said budget cuts would force the agency to reduce its planned $2.2 billion contribution by about $700 million.

Both sides have since returned to the drawing board and are developing a plan to combine the two rovers into a single, larger vehicle compatible with the so-called "sky crane" landing system NASA developed for its MSL, a car-sized rover slated to launch to the planet in November.

"Given budget constraints facing both agencies, NASA and ESA have been in discussions on revised plans for the implementation of the Mars 2016 and 2018 missions," NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs says. "We hope that by the September timeframe, we'll be in position to move forward with a plan for the successful implementation of both missions."

Gimenez says NASA's financial contribution as the lead agency for the 2018 mission is critical to ESA's efforts to continue work on the 2016 mission.

"We cannot go ahead for the 2016 mission if we are not totally sure about 2018. If there is no commitment from NASA then we will not proceed with the industrial development for 2016," he says.

However, Gimenez says that in addition to cost-savings in Europe, scaling back or scrapping the EDL could reduce NASA's launch costs.

"We could have a lighter one or we could have no lander, and that of course affects very easily the cost of the launcher for NASA," he says. "Of course it has to be a significant decrease in the weight, but it's clear if we decrease the weight we decrease the cost to them. It's heavy stuff."

In addition to demonstrating European entry, descent and landing technologies, the EDL is designed to conduct some limited science investigations during its four-day mission on the Martian surface. In June ESA and NASA selected scientific investigations that will probe the atmosphere during the lander's descent stage and return data for the first time analyzing electrical fields on Mars.

During the descent phase, two proposed investigations would use the lander's entry, descent and landing engineering data to reconstruct its trajectory and determine the atmospheric conditions.

The EDL would also be expected to make use of a color camera system that would provide additional scientific data and images of the Martian surface, though a decision on the camera's design is not expected by year-end, ESA says.

The Mars Trace Gas Orbiter, in addition to serving as a data relay capability for the 2018 ExoMars rover, will investigate methane and other atmospheric gases present in small concentrations around Mars, focusing on those that could offer clues as to the existence of life there. The orbiter's scientific instruments, drawn from broad international participation in the effort, will include an infrared radiometer to detect chemicals, dust and any water vapor in the Martian atmosphere, along with spectrometers capable of detecting elements at trace levels, ESA says. Cameras, including stereo and wide-angle, multispectral imagers, will provide pictures of the planet's surface and support other instruments.

As technical experts at NASA and ESA redesign the 2018 ExoMars mission, the two sides expect to present initial designs to the program board in September. Both are expected to settle on a final configuration that meshes NASA's MAX-C Explorer/Cacher drone and ESA's drill-equipped rover, following completion of a number of intensive technical studies later this year.

The agencies will then divvy up workshare for the mission. NASA is expected to contribute the launch vehicle, cruise stage, sky-crane landing system and caching payload. ESA, which is expected to lead development of the rover, would modify current designs to incorporate NASA's soil-caching capability, making it compatible with the MSL landing system, which requires that the rover land on its wheels rather than on a platform, as envisioned under the original dual-rover plan.[/size]
"Были когда-то и мы рысаками!!!"

Космос-3794

В NASA заявили своим коллегам из ESA, что не смогут обеспечить носитель Atlas 5 (даже в минимальной конфигурации) для запуска миссии к Марсу в 2016.
Болден (NASA) и Дордэн (ESA) 3 октября, в Южной Африке, должны определиться с одним из двух сценариев:
 - совместный запуск в 2018 ровера и телекоммуникационного ретранслятора с использованием расширенной версии перелетного модуля.
 - сохранение миссии 2016 года, несмотря на неопределенности с носителем.
В первом случае возникают вопросы по массе КА, оцениваемой в 3600 кг без ретранслятора, что близко к предельной выводимой Атласом на заданную орбиту.
Во втором случае возможны только два варианта:
 - запуск на Ariane 5, что маловероятно, т.к. будет стоить более $150 млн., а бюджет миссии и так  "трещит по швам".
 - запуск на Протоне по бартеру с Роскосмосом (условия бартера неизвестны).
Результаты встречи будут представлены 12-13 октября на рассмотрение стран-участниц ЕКА.

http://www.spacenews.com/civil/110930-nasa-cant-launch-exomars-orbiter.html

hecata

А сколько Протон-М выводит на отлетную к Марсу, интересно?

instml

ЦитироватьА сколько Протон-М выводит на отлетную к Марсу, интересно?
С современными РБ 5,5 тонн и более.

По Марсу-96:

стартовая масса: 6825 кг
масса АМС на межпланетной траектории: 5678.5 кг
сухая масса АМС: 3780 кг
Go MSL!

Иэсэсовец

Слышал, что европейцы отказались от канадского марсохода в пользу России. Это правда? И кто его будет делать?