When NASA announced its plans for future explorations of Mars, there was a sense of disappointment in some quarters, since it featured a rover much like Curiosity. But NASA made clear that it was only using the proven technology of the vehicle itself; the instruments it carried would be all new and shaped by both the advancement of technology and the experience of past missions.
Today NASA announced exactly what instruments the mission—currently called Mars 2020—will carry. They included hardware capable of making a more directed search for organic chemicals on the red planet, which could be evidence that life existed there in the past. And it will also carry an experiment designed to test our ability to produce oxygen for future manned explorations of Mars. The rover will also gather and cache samples to be picked up and returned to Earth by a future mission.
NASA had received nearly 60 proposals for instruments to fly on the Mars 2020 mission. From that list, it has selected seven, which it expects will cost a total of roughly $130 million to develop and build. Once again, the rover will be equipped with a mastcam (Mastcam-Z in this iteration) that includes panoramic and stereo imaging. The rover will also carry an instrument to track the wind, temperature, and the properties of Mars' persistent dust.
There are two instruments that have the potential to pick up indications that Mars once hosted life. One is a camera dedicated to studying minerals (SuperCam), which will also be able to detect organic chemicals. That will be joined by Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC), which can study the composition of samples using a UV-laser and detect organic compounds. An X-ray fluorescence spectrometer called PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry) will provide another way of assessing the chemicals on the surface of Martian rocks.
If past life is a major focus of Mars 2020, future life also gets a slot on the rover. An experiment called MOXIE will attempt to split carbon dioxide, the most abundant gas in Mars' atmosphere, which could provide a local source of oxygen for future manned missions.
I've saved the instrument that seems most intriguing to me for last: the Radar Imager for Mars' Subsurface Exploration, which will provide maps of the subsurface of Mars with resolution down to a centimeter. There have been plenty of indications of subsurface ices and even possible water flows near some of Mars' craters. Getting a better sense of what's down there could provide a much clearer picture of what niches might be able to support an ecosystem on the current planet.
The sample return portion of the mission will involve a drill for core samples of rocks and a container that can hold 31 of them. To understand the requirements beyond the basic outline, NASA will probably first have to design the hardware for the return trip. After many years of talk, it's nice to know that the Mars sample return has become a priority.
One other noteworthy aspect of announcement is the number of countries involved with the Mars 2020 mission. Of the seven instrument packages, three will come from France, Norway, and Spain. The rover will also be able to use the European Space Agency's ExoMars orbiter (scheduled for later this decade) as a data relay and will be sharing the red planet's surface with an ESA rover.
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