MSUK Welcomes Joint Initiative

A Response to the Esa / NASA Mars Exploration Joint Initiation (Meji)
For Immediate release: Nov 8th, 2009
From: The Mars Society UK
Contact: Bo Maxwell, Managing Director, The Mars Society UK
Telephone: 0709 280 5915

On November 8th, 2009 Esa Director-General Jean-Jacques Dordain and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden signed the Mars Exploration Joint Initiative (Meji), tying together US and European attempts to further our understanding of the Red Planet.

Under the agreement, the European and American robotic efforts towards Mars - which have thus far proceeded individually and with varying degrees of duplication of effort - will now come together in terms of shared responsibility, scope and financing. This in turn will enable the robotic exploration of Mars to proceed on the basis of a mission every two years.

Esa has already committed some 850 million euros towards the exploration of Mars, and this figure is likely to be increased to around 1 billion at a Council of Ministers meeting in December 2009. As a result, Meji already outlines a broad mission time frame (still subject to ratification) that comprises a European-lead orbiter mission in 2016 (with a small descent module), joint European / US rover landings in 2018 and a possible network of geophysical landers in 2020.

Commenting on the Initiative, Bo Maxwell, Managing Director of the Mars Society UK stated, "Any sustained effort to explore Mars is best undertaken on an international, cooperative basis. In signing Meji, Europe and America have opened the doors to such cooperation which, we in the Mars society globally hope, will not only enable robotic misions to Mars, but will in time encompass very real efforts to send humans there in the not too distant future".

He added, "With this in mind, we congratulate Drector-General Dordain and Adminstrator Bolden in signing this Initiative and convey our thanks to Professor David Southwood and Dr. Ed Weiler for their work in developing Meji. We look forward to a successful series of joint undertakings towards Mars, and trust that both Esa and NASA will see the value in developing similar initiatives - with broader international involvement - as we move towards the human exploration of Mars."

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