NASA To Invest $32 Million In Elon Musk’s Red Dragon Mars Lander Mission

NASA has reportedly signed an unfunded Space Act Agreement with SpaceX for its upcoming Red Dragon Mars lander mission which will see an unmanned spaceship making its way to the Red planet as early as 2018. It is estimated that SpaceX's Red Dragon mission will cost around $320 million.

Addressing the NASA Advisory Council's technology committee meeting, Jim Reuter, deputy associate administrator for programs in NASA's space technology mission directorate, said that the space agency us going to invest $32 million into the project over four years, reported SpaceNews.

He added that no exchange of funds will take place between NASA and Elon Musk's SpaceX. The $32 million will be offered as salaries to employees who provide technical support to SpaceX. In exchange for the support, the space agency will get access to the data collected during the Dragon's landing on Mars. The main aim of the mission will be to check whether SpaceX is capable of landing heavy payloads on Mars, reported SpaceFlight Now.

According to Reuter, if successful, the Red Dragon spacecraft will be the largest lander ever to reach Mars, weighing at around eight to 10 tons. NASA's Curiosity rover which landed on the Red planet back in August 2012 weighed in at about a ton. The demo mission will inform about technicalities required for astronauts to land on Mars. The spacecraft will depend on a propulsive landing rather than landing on parachutes. It will be launched atop a Falcon Heavy rocket.

"The two technologies that are needed no matter which way we go are precision landing and supersonic retro-propulsion," Reuter said. It is expected that data collected from Red Dragon mission will help NASA prepare the architecture for its own human Mars mission. While, SpaceX has not revealed much details about the mission, company chief Elon Musk is expected to announce about the plans at a global space conference scheduled to be held in Mexico in September.