Small Mars Mission Architectural Study

ESA’s current Mars exploration programme consists of the flying orbiters Mars Express and the Exomars TGO, while the Exomars rover is planned for launch in 2022. The Nov 2019 ESA Council of Ministers meeting, Space19+, has approved ESA contributions to a Mars Sample Return Campaign, led by NASA, with a launch of the sample retrieval missions planned to occur as early as 2026.

While the vast majority of ESA’s funding for Mars exploration in 2020’s is planned to be invested in Mars Sample Return, there is interest to assess, at Phase 0-level, the possibility of implementing a small mission to Mars in parallel with or soon after the completion of the MSR programme, in order to further the exploration of Mars in areas not directly addressed by MSR.

A study was undertaken in the Concurrent Design Facility at ESA, ESTEC in order to assess low cost mission architectures for small satellite missions to Mars. Given strict programmatic constraints, the focus of the study was on a low cost, short mission development schedule with a cost-driven spacecraft design and mission architecture.

Three mission cases were studied:

The study assessed a wide range of mission architectures and focused on commercial rideshare options to GTO from which the satellite(s) would transfer to Mars utilising either chemical or electric propulsion. The study results showing the feasibility of such missions meeting the programmatic constraints and options for future work will be presented.