Two days after bringing Discovery home, NASA prepared Thursday to launch a spacecraft to Mars with new tools designed to gather more data on the planet than all previous Martian missions combined, AP reported. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is expected to spend four years circling Mars, collecting information that will help NASA plan where to land two robotic explorers later this decade and possible future human exploration of the Red Planet. The Phoenix Mars Scout, in search of organic chemicals, will be launched in 2007, and the Mars Science Laboratory will follow two years later. «We don't want to be hauling cement to Mars. That's very expensive,» said project scientist Richard Zurek, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. «Better to know what we can make on the surface of the planet.» The 2-ton orbiter, equipped with the largest telescopic camera ever sent to another planet, will provide unparalleled information on Mars' weather, climate and geology. The US$720-million (¤580-million) mission is also expected to help build on NASA's knowledge of the history of ice on the planet. The planet is cold and dry with large caps of frozen water at its poles. But scientists think it was a wetter and possibly warmer place eons ago _ conditions that might have been conducive to life. Scientists are also trying to determine if it could support future human outposts.
