European Space Agency and NASA Team up for a Mission to Mars

A developing story indicates that the European Space Agency and NASA have been communicating recently about a possible joint mission to Mars. The preliminary launch date is 2016 with a goal of landing a rover on Mars to send back valuable data to the two agencies. This surprised the cosmic world because NASA typically had a "do it yourself" attitude in which they didn't cooperate with any other space agencies in any space endeavors only allowing different agencies to add onto the rover to send back data. With this mission, the two agencies will split the cost in order to allow a possible launch during these dire economic times. NASA space sciences chief Ed Weiler said that he believed a joint mission was the best option during these tough economic times as long as "We [USA] can lose a little bit of our ego and nationalism." The only thing holding NASA back is who is to pay for the rocket to send the rovers into space as well as the fact that the European Space Agency has not successfully landed a rover on Mars. Ultimately NASA would like to be able to send a rover to Mars to collect martian rocks and send them back to Earth to be analyzed, which would cost an estimated $5 billion, making a joint mission the most economically friendly solution.