European Space Agency Mars Exploration Future Planning

Introduction:  Following the finalisation of ESA’s European Explore2040 strategy [1], which describes the Agency’s vision for establishing an uninterrupted, responsible human and robotic exploration of the Solar System, ESA has prepared an implementation plan which proposes how to translate the strategy into a set of implementable scenarios and options for the future. The implementation plan relies on a stepwise approach and synergies between exploration destinations with a 20-year outlook, in order to offer an achievable and affordable execution of European exploration activities. Continued access to Mars is a crucial piece for the implementation of the Explore2040 strategy: for Mars, ESA expects to enable excellence in science outcomes, to bring about technological innovation, and to generate wider socio-economic benefits. 

Mars Exploration Service Capabilities: Three key service capabilities have been identified as enabling for lower cost of future missions, for offering missions of opportunity, and for increasing access to Mars. These service capabilities are: (1) propulsive transfer services; (2) communications and navigations services; and (3) heavy and precise landing services. The implementation plan forsees the build-up up of the services over time to ensure a manageable cost profile.

• Propulsive transfer services: a propulsive tug capability that can transfer one or more passenger spacecraft to Mars should create many more opportunities for access to Mars than has previously been the case.
• Communications and navigation services: a predefined orbital communication and navigation service allows future Mars landers and orbiters to maximise scientific data return from early stages of mission design and planning while reducing their own on-board telecommunication systems. 
• Heavy and precise landing services: a capability for landing increasingly heavy and more precise Mars landers prepares the way for heavy cargo and increased science data return from the Mars surface for ESA missions. 

Exploration science:  The Explore2040 strategy roadmap will aim to incrementally build-up the scientific knowledge required for deep space exploration by humans, carefully balancing exploration-focused science and exploration-enabled science objectives in a synergistic framework that fosters discovery while underpinning and driving new technology developments. 

Mission Studies: A Phase A/B1 mission study will be initiated in 2024, to define the first mission on the Mars Exploration implementation roadmap: a propulsive tug service and its first passenger spacecraft. The propulsive tug will transfer its passenger spacecraft to a low Mars orbit and then return to a higher Mars orbit where it will spend the remainder of its lifetime as a communication and navigation infrastructure node that also provides full Mars disk visibility to a suite of scientific instruments on board. The first mission is planned to embark a passenger spacecraft with a high-resolution imager as its primary instrument. High-resolution mapping of potential landing sites will enable future high-precision and pinpoint landing on the surface of Mars. ESA expects to establish standards for the communication and navigation elements in the near term, evolving from existing stakeholder agreements that have been established for lunar exploration.

Future orbital missions as described above will alternate with a programme of increasingly heavy and precise landed missions. Precursor ESA internal studies have also begun to define the scope of these missions.

Concepts described in this paper are pre-decisional and for planning purposes only.

Acknowledgments: The ESTEC Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) is a state-of-the-art facility that enables a fast and effective interaction between experts. It is primarily used to assess the technical and financial feasibility of future space missions and new spacecraft concepts.

Reference:

[1] ESA Explore2040 Strategy (not yet public at time of abstract)