Boeing-Led Team Charts Course for Future Mars Exploration.

Business Editors

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 20, 2001

A Boeing-led team has been awarded one of four $1 million contracts from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., to study options for a potential Mars sample return mission in 2011.

The contract runs from April through October.

"Selecting, collecting and returning samples from Mars is the most ambitious mission JPL has ever planned," said Program Manager Brent Sherwood of Boeing. "We now know that the most important sampling locations are precisely the hardest to land near and to operate robots within."

Boeing is integrating a broad team of highly accomplished science, robotics and space transportation architects and specialists. The team includes:

-- David B. Smith and researchers from SpaceDev Inc. of San Diego.

-- Dr. Ronald Greeley and his Mars science team from Arizona State University,
department of geological sciences.

-- Dr. William "Red" Whittaker and his field robotics team at The Robotics
Institute, Carnegie Mellon University.

-- Gordon R. Woodcock of Gray Research of Huntsville, Ala.

-- Draper Laboratory of Cambridge, Mass.

-- The Aerospace Corp. of El Segundo, Calif.

-- Dr. Ed Belbruno of Innovative Orbital Design of Princeton, N.J.

Whittaker said upcoming technological advances will expand the role of robotics in future planetary exploration.

"The possibility for robots is far beyond our current thinking of a drone that merely responds to commands," Whittaker said. "In the next few years, we'll develop competent and capable agents that will work as partners in exploring other worlds."