Mars life-search mission postponed

WASHINGTON - NASA said yesterday that it will postpone by two years the planned launch of a major mission to study whether Mars was ever capable of harboring life, citing development and testing delays.

NASA administrator Michael Griffin said the Mars Science Laboratory mission must be pushed back from next year in part because of problems with motors on the six-wheeled rover designed to operate on the unforgiving surface of the Red Planet. The delay of the planned October 2009 launch to autumn 2011 is expected to add about $400 million to the program's cost, now estimated at $2.2 billion to $2.3 billion, said Doug McCuistion, director of the NASA Mars exploration program.

The mission is designed to assess whether the Martian environment is or ever was able to support microbial life. It is the latest in the exploration of Earth's neighbor, which scientists believe had abundant liquid water on the surface in the past and may have been home to some type of life forms.

"I have full confidence in the JPL team (NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California) to be able to work through the difficulties, but we've determined that trying for '09 would require us to assume too much risk - more than I think is appropriate for a flagship mission like Mars Science Laboratory," Griffin told a news conference.

"A mission like this ranks just behind a manned mission in importance," Griffin said.

REUTERS