With the continued success of Mars rover Curiosity, NASA is going ahead and starting work on a second rover to be sent into Mars as early as 2020!
The second rover, called Curiosity II, will be designed with special new tools that will hopefully allow Martian specimens to be brought back to Earth. On top of that, the construction of Curiosity II will cost only 1.5 billion dollars, which is one billion dollars less than the cost of building Curiosity!
Curiosity’s recent findings were a disappointment because they were not anything new, so bringing some rocks back from Mars would make things a lot easier. However, the act of getting the specimen back is not so easy. It would require three lengthy missions: the first would be to choose, pick up and store the rocks, the second to pick up the samples and fly them to a Mars orbit and the third would finally deliver them from Mars to Earth.
In the meantime, NASA has some smaller Mars missions planned, such as the launch of MAVEN next year which will study the Martian atmosphere and another lander in a few years that will explore Mars’ crust and interior.