NASA is expanding its plans for Mars, looking at not only a big, high-budget, long-term project to bring back a sample from Mars but also smaller, lower-cost missions to enable exploration of the red planet. The agency recently announced it has selected nine private companies that will perform a total of 12 studies into small-scale projects for enabling Mars science.
“We’re in an exciting new era of space exploration, with rapid growth of commercial interest and capabilities,” said Eric Ianson, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, in a statement. “Now is the right time for NASA to begin looking at how public-private partnerships could support science at Mars in the coming decades.”
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