Artist's conception of Mars Micromission satellite cruising through space. Photo: Ball Aerospace

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has been selected for a contract from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to build a spacecraft that will travel to Mars. This is the first contract Ball Aerospace has won that involves building a spacecraft that will leave the Earthıs orbit and travel to another planet. The contract is contingent on NASA committing the funds required for the Mars Micromission. This decision is expected by February 2000.

The spacecraft, which falls under NASA's Mars Micromissions program, is the size of an office desk and weighs less than 500 pounds. More than half of its weight is taken up with the fuel necessary to fly the spacecraft to Mars, which is the distance around the Earth 1,870 times. Aerojet in Sacramento will build the propulsion system for this spacecraft, under subcontract to Ball. The spacecraft will carry a NASA communications payload that will relay data from other Mars missions back to Earth.

"This is an important strategic win for Ball Aerospace," said Harold Reitsema, director of space science missions at Ball Aerospace. "We expect that the Mars Micromissions will give us the opportunity to build multiple spacecraft that fly to Mars," Reitsema said. "In addition, the design for the Micromissions calls for the development of small, lightweight spacecraft components that can be used to build low-cost spacecraft for other challenging missions to the Moon, Venus, asteriods, and comets.

"The Mars Micromissions opportunity is a nice complement to other missions that we are involved in. These are the Deep Impact mission, which will fly to comet Tempel 1 and observe the formation of an impact crater, and Space Technology-3, which is NASAıs first attempt to fly two spacecraft in formation to obtain high-resolution images through interferometry. These missions all leave Earthıs orbit and represent Ballıs commitment to involvement in new NASA science missions to explore our solar system and look for other solar systems," concluded Reitsema.

NASA's Mars Micromissions program, run by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, intends to send small general purpose spacecraft buses, one or two every two years starting late 2002, to support low-cost science missions to study our neighboring planet, Mars. These spacecraft missions will either carry payloads that will land on Mars or instruments that will remain onboard to carry out experiments while orbiting Mars.

The Mars Micromission Project is planning to launch a series of a small spacecraft to Mars as piggyback payloads on the French Ariane 5 rocket when it launches commercial communication satellites into an Earth-based geosynchronous transfer orbit. From Earth orbit, the Mars Micromission spacecraft will use on-board propulsion and an innovative trajectory involving Lunar and Earth flybys to send the spacecraft on the proper trajectory to Mars. The launch services will be provided through the NASA partnership with the French space agency, Centre National D'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), at no cost to NASA. Launch of the first Mars Micromission spacecraft is planned for spring of 2003 from the Ariane launch facilities in Kourou, French Guiana.

The design of the Mars Micromission spacecraft is based on a common spacecraft bus concept, which can be configured to deliver one or more science probes to the Martian atmosphere or carry extra propellant for orbit insertion into Mars orbit. The 2003 Mars Micromission would be a communication/navigation orbiter, the first of a constellation of Mars-orbiting satellites that would make up the Mars Network. The Mars Network is intended to dramatically increase the data returned to Earth from future landed or orbiting Mars missions by providing efficient relay communications, while also providing navigation capabilities like those of the Global Positioning Satellite system.

"The combination of the common spacecraft design and the piggyback launch is essential to achieve the Mars Micromission Project goals of frequent low-cost access to Mars," said David Lehman, the JPL project manager for the Mars Micromission. "We plan to be able to launch at least two Mars Micromission spacecraft during every Mars opportunity, about every two years. About half of these spacecraft are expected to carry out focused science investigations selected through competition, while the other half will be used to build up the Mars Network of communication relay and navigation satellites."

The Mars Micromission Project is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C., as part of the ongoing Mars Surveyor Program. The purpose of the Mars Micromission is to increase the quality and quantity of the science and technology data from the Mars Surveyor Program. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. provides systems engineering services, and designs and manufactures complete space systems; spacecraft; space and Earth science instruments and sensors; cryogenic subsystems; antenna systems and video products for commercial and government customers. The company is a subsidiary of Ball Corporation, a Fortune 500 company which had sales of $2.9 billion in 1998.