SpaceX Mars mission

SpaceX first Mars robotic mission was planned for 2018 and then every other Mars opportunity (roughly every 26 months) but SpaceX have now dropped the Dragon going to Mars in favor of pursuing the upcoming 'Starship' design.

See StarHopper test

For manned missions see SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System (ITS)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — The search for signs of life on Mars may have just gotten a lot cheaper.

NASA is working with private spaceflight firm Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) to plan a mission that would search for evidence of life buried in the Martian dirt. The NASA science hardware was to fly to the Red Planet aboard SpaceX's Dragon capsule, that SpaceX developed to ferry cargo and astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

This so-called "Red Dragon" mission, was to be ready to launch by 2018.

"I just want a cheap delivery system to go to Mars," said astrobiologist Chris McKay, of NASA's Ames Research Center here. "I don't care how it gets there." [The Falcon and Dragons of SpaceX]

Mission to Mars

McKay and his colleagues are developing the Red Dragon concept as a potential NASA Discovery mission, a category that stresses exploration on the relative cheap. NASA is currently vetting three Discovery candidates, one of which it will choose for a 2016 launch. That mission will be cost-capped at $425 million, not including the launch vehicle.

"We'd have money left over to do some science," McKay told SPACE.com here Saturday (July 30) during the NewSpace 2011 conference, which was held at NASA Ames. "Wouldn't that be great?"

Drilling into the ice

NASA is currently gearing up to send a car-size rover called Curiosity to Mars as the centerpiece of the agency's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. MSL is slated to launched 26 November 2011 and arrive at the Red Planet in Gale Crater on 6th August 2012.

Curiosity will use a suite of 10 sophisticated instruments to assess whether Mars is, or ever was, capable of supporting life. Red Dragon, on the other hand, would actually look for evidence of that life. [5 Bold Claims of Alien Life]

"We'd try to detect molecules that are proof of life, like DNA or perchlorate reductase," McKay said. "That's what we'd be searching for — proof of life through biomolecules."

The Martian surface today is bone-dry and bombarded by damaging ultraviolet radiation, making life unlikely to survive there. But Red Dragon would drill 3.3 feet (1 meter) or so underground, in an effort to sample reservoirs of water ice known to lurk under the red dirt.

Researchers are looking at two possible Martian sites for Red Dragon's mission, McKay said. One is the landing site of NASA's Phoenix lander; the other is where NASA's Viking 2 lander touched down in 1976. Both areas are known to harbour subsurface ice. [Infographic: Mars Landers and Rovers Since 1971]

Partnering with private spaceflight