Add to that, as well as Rosetta's Philae landing on a comet later this month, and New Horizon's to Pluto next year - India's MOM is on its way to Mars, will do orbital insertion in - if successful, then only the fourth space agency to send missions to Mars orbit after the US, Russian and Europe. India launches spacecraft to Mars
Mars Orbiter Mission may test-fire main engine before orbit insertion
Also NASA's Maven both to do their final orbit insertion this autumn.
Further in the future, personally I'm really interested in ExoMars in 2018.
It will be the first ever mission to go to another place in the solar system specifically to search for life since Viking 1 and 2.
And even the successor for Curiosity won't search for life, is a purely geological mission looking for conditions for life rather than life directly like Curiosity. It is going to cache samples, for possible future return to Earth but those are unlikely to contain any past or present life unless it is very common and easy to find on Mars, likely to be no more conclusive for life than the Mars meteorites.
But ExoMars will search for life directly on Mars and dig up to 2 meters below the surface as well.
And it is planned as first of many such missions. They start with a technology demo in 2016 to test the technology to land on Mars. So are doing this carefully step by step, and lots of telemetry so if anything goes wrong we will know why.
So - I think all our hopes for searching for life on Mars are pinned on ExoMars at present. It would be lucky to find life right away - depends.
If life on Mars is so common you have present day life almost everywhere as some think is possible from the Viking measurements then ExoMars might detect present day life (our rovers to date apart from possibly Viking labelled release would not be able to detect present day life even as organics, in arid deserts on Earth so had no chance really on Mars).
But ExoMars can explore many different layers - planned probably to go to an area of Mars with hundreds of strata, many of them clay - so it can sample many different layers until it finds one with potential signs of life, and then dig deep.
So - I think it has a chance of finding past life. And a chance also for present day life.
But perhaps instead it will find evidence that is suggestive but not conclusive e.g. chiral signature - because past life is so degraded so easily by cosmic radiation - and present day life - only likely in equatorial regions if it is very common on Mars.
It might for instance conclude that you need the capability to dig deeper than 2 meters, to take an example, to find reasonably intact ancient life - or change ideas about where to look.
Past life likely to be hard to find even if ubiquitous on ancient Mars as you also have the conditions for preservation to think about not just whether it was there originally - e.g. easily washed out by floods, needs clays to preserve it, can deteriorate through warmth if e.g. deposited at the bottom of a lake if not immediately frozen, and then cosmic radiation if exposed close to the surface for a few hundred million or a billion years, would be almost nothing left.
And might only occur in rare places.
So - whether it finds life or not I don't know, but - it's the way to go for sure, to search in situ.
Either way hopefully will lead to many more missions to Mars searching for life directly on Mars, both past life and present day life also targeting more likely sites for present day life than ExoMars.
Also the ESA JUICE for the 2020s to Europa and Jupiter's icy moons
ESA Science & Technology: JUICE
Cassini continues to orbit Saturn and is continually making new discoveries, I think our most distant spacecraft apart from the New Horizons one to Pluto.
Cassini Solstice Mission
Mars Orbiter Mission may test-fire main engine before orbit insertion
Also NASA's Maven both to do their final orbit insertion this autumn.
Further in the future, personally I'm really interested in ExoMars in 2018.
It will be the first ever mission to go to another place in the solar system specifically to search for life since Viking 1 and 2.
And even the successor for Curiosity won't search for life, is a purely geological mission looking for conditions for life rather than life directly like Curiosity. It is going to cache samples, for possible future return to Earth but those are unlikely to contain any past or present life unless it is very common and easy to find on Mars, likely to be no more conclusive for life than the Mars meteorites.
But ExoMars will search for life directly on Mars and dig up to 2 meters below the surface as well.
And it is planned as first of many such missions. They start with a technology demo in 2016 to test the technology to land on Mars. So are doing this carefully step by step, and lots of telemetry so if anything goes wrong we will know why.
So - I think all our hopes for searching for life on Mars are pinned on ExoMars at present. It would be lucky to find life right away - depends.
If life on Mars is so common you have present day life almost everywhere as some think is possible from the Viking measurements then ExoMars might detect present day life (our rovers to date apart from possibly Viking labelled release would not be able to detect present day life even as organics, in arid deserts on Earth so had no chance really on Mars).
But ExoMars can explore many different layers - planned probably to go to an area of Mars with hundreds of strata, many of them clay - so it can sample many different layers until it finds one with potential signs of life, and then dig deep.
So - I think it has a chance of finding past life. And a chance also for present day life.
But perhaps instead it will find evidence that is suggestive but not conclusive e.g. chiral signature - because past life is so degraded so easily by cosmic radiation - and present day life - only likely in equatorial regions if it is very common on Mars.
It might for instance conclude that you need the capability to dig deeper than 2 meters, to take an example, to find reasonably intact ancient life - or change ideas about where to look.
Past life likely to be hard to find even if ubiquitous on ancient Mars as you also have the conditions for preservation to think about not just whether it was there originally - e.g. easily washed out by floods, needs clays to preserve it, can deteriorate through warmth if e.g. deposited at the bottom of a lake if not immediately frozen, and then cosmic radiation if exposed close to the surface for a few hundred million or a billion years, would be almost nothing left.
And might only occur in rare places.
So - whether it finds life or not I don't know, but - it's the way to go for sure, to search in situ.
Either way hopefully will lead to many more missions to Mars searching for life directly on Mars, both past life and present day life also targeting more likely sites for present day life than ExoMars.
Also the ESA JUICE for the 2020s to Europa and Jupiter's icy moons
ESA Science & Technology: JUICE
Cassini continues to orbit Saturn and is continually making new discoveries, I think our most distant spacecraft apart from the New Horizons one to Pluto.
Cassini Solstice Mission
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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