Launch of the next Mars Scout mission will be delayed by two years to 2013 due to an undisclosed conflict of interest with one of two finalists, Doug McCuistion, NASA's Mars Exploration program director, said in a Dec. 21 teleconference with reporters. Upon discovering the conflict, the evaluation panel was disbanded, and an entirely new panel has been formed, McCuistion said. New proposals for the next Mars Scout mission will be due in August, and the selection will occur in December 2008, he said

Several competing unmanned aerial vehicle missions are likely to be proposed for flight on Mars in NASA's next Scout competition, according to Andy Gonzales, program manager for NASA Ames Research Center's MATADOR project. Set to begin in roughly a year, the next Mars Scout competition will select one or more missions for launch to Mars in 2011. If upcoming flight-tests of MATADOR (Mars Advanced Technology Airplane for Deployment, Operations, and Recovery) are successful, the team may propose a mission, according to Gonzales. "We're hopeful that the [Mars] airplane's time has finally come."

NASA plans on launching its first Mars Scout mission in 2007 at a cost capped at $325 million. But what that mission will actually be is still unknown. It's up to a jury of experts to choose from among four mission concepts: Phoenix, Marvel, Ares, and Scim. May the best concept win.

While stormy weather forced NASA to postpone yesterday’s launch of a robot explorer to Mars, Canadian scientists remained hopeful over the weekend they would win a bid to search for life on the red planet. One of those scientists is Diane Michelangeli, an atmospheric science professor at York University in Toronto. She is part of a Canadian contingent still in the running for a 2007 NASA scout mission to Mars.

MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (TSX: MDA) announced today that the company's subsidiary, MD Robotics has been awarded a $150,000 study contract by the Canadian Space Agency for the Canadian contribution to a U.S.-led Phoenix Mars Scout mission. During this mission definition study, MD Robotics will work with Toronto- based Optech and with members of the Canadian scientific community to carry out engineering studies and conceptual design for potential Canadian elements of the mission. The elements include a laser-based scientific instrument to conduct atmospheric studies on the planet, as well as a laser sensor that will ensure a safe and accurate spacecraft landing on Mars.

NASA has moved up the deadline for submission of the "final four" proposals for its planned Mars Scout mission. The four finalists are now expected to submit their designs for remote exploration systems, blending advanced robotics with lab-on-chip technology, by May 15 instead of July. The finalists have each been given an extra $100,000, on top of the $500,000 already promised, to get their designs and feasibility studies in to the agency by the new deadline. NASA has set aside $325 million to build the winning system for a Scout mission to Mars in 2007.

In five years, a new class of spacecraft will be heading to the Red Planet. This week, NASA announced the four finalists that will compete for the opportunity to be the first "Mars Scout." Of the 25 proposals submitted in August, NASA selected these four because of their innovative scientific goals and cost effectiveness. Each mission is designed to answer many unknown questions about the planet's chemical composition and biological activity. A full-scale model of the ARES Mars airplane NASA / LARC The four finalists are: ARES, Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey; Marvel, Mars Volcanic Emission and Life Scout; Phoenix; and SCIM, Sample Collection for Investigation of Mars.

A Mars airplane soaring over wild and windy terrain. An orbiter scanning for evidence of Martian microbes. A lander to probe for water deposits on the red planet, and a novel way to scoop up Mars samples for return to Earth. For its 2007 Mars Scout program last week NASA selected four innovative candidate missions for further investigation. Each of the proposed spacecraft missions is capable of returning a treasure trove of impressive science data. NASA's Mars exploration program has taken a bold step to help unravel the enigmatic planet's past and present - including its potential as a distant abode for life.

Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation announced today that it is a member of the Aerial Regional-Scale Environmental Survey (ARES) team, whose proposal is one of four selected for Phase II of NASA's Mars Scout mission. Aurora is the airframe provider for the ARES team, which is led by the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The ARES mission will use a small robotic aircraft to provide the first direct measurements of the near-surface chemistry of the Martian atmosphere. These measurements will yield information critical to helping scientists understand the evolution, climate, and potential for life on Mars.

In the first step of a two-step process, NASA selected four proposals for detailed study as candidates for the 2007 "Scout" mission in the agency's Mars Exploration Program.

NASA today announced four proposals -- the first step of a two-step process -- to select a 2007 "Scout" mission in the agency's Mars Exploration Program. The first round winners are: SCIM (Sample Collection for Investigation of Mars), ARES (Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey, PHOENIX, and MARVEL (Mars Volcanic Emission and Life Scout.

possible mission to Mars in 2007 would scrutinize the martian atmosphere for any chemical traces of life, or even environments supportive of life, anywhere on the planet. An international team led by Dr. Mark Allen, an atmospheric chemist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., developed the mission proposal named Mars Volcanic Emission and Life Scout, or Marvel. Today, NASA announced that Marvel is one of four finalists in competition for the first Mars Scout Mission for the 2007 launch opportunity. Final selection by the NASA associate administrator for space science, Dr. Edward Weiler, will be made by late next summer.

NASA has selected a proposal for a mission that would collect samples of martian atmospheric dust as one of four finalists for the first Mars Scout mission. The proposal, directed by Arizona State University geologist and cosmochemist Laurie Leshin, will receive a $500,000 grant to complete its development prior to the agency’s final selection process, which will begin next summer. The Mars Scout Program plans to mount at least one (and perhaps several) Scout missions to Mars beginning in 2007, with budgets of up to $300 million per mission. Leshin’s proposal is called "Sample Collection for Investigation of Mars” (SCIM), and involves a mission that would do a hit-and-run with the dusty Martian atmosphere. The proposed mission would perform the first return of a Martian sample at less cost, lower risk and in a shorter time frame than the far more complicated missions that will eventually be launched to collect samples from the planet's surface.

A hot-nosed robot melted its way 75 feet into an Arctic glacier in a test of NASA technology that one day could probe for life deep under ice on Earth, Mars and Jupiter's frozen moon Europa. The cylindrical Cryobot - its copper tip heated to temperatures up to 195 degrees - took four days to bore into the glacier on the island of Spitsbergen, north of the Arctic Circle. "It was basically like a hot iron against the ice," said Lloyd French, who was among scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology involved in October's test.

Robots that melt their way through ice may one day explore below frozen surfaces of other worlds, based on a pioneering version that successfully bored into an Arctic glacier in an adventurous field test. NASA teamed with the Norwegian Polar Institute and Norwegian Space Center to use the ice-penetrating robot, or Cryobot, for the first time on a glacier on the island of Spitsbergen, far above the Arctic Circle in the Norwegian-administered international territory of Svalbad. A mission proposal called Cryoscout will compete with other Mars Scout proposals to be chosen by NASA for a 2007 launch to Mars. Cryoscout is one of 10 Mars Scout concepts selected last year for further study. It proposes using a Cryobot to descend through Mars' polar ice cap. "If you want to learn about the climate history of Mars, which is important in the search for life, you want to examine the layers of the polar caps, and this is how you can do it," said Scott Anderson, a geophysicist on the Cryobot field-test team.