George H. Diller
Kennedy Space Center
Dec. 20, 2000
321/867-2468

KSC Release No. 111-00

NASA today announced that it is exercising a contract option with the Boeing Company for a Delta II vehicle to launch the Mars Exploration Rover 2 (MER-B). The spacecraft is scheduled for launch at the beginning of a 21-day planetary window that opens on June 27, 2003. This firm-fixed price option is covered under the NASA Launch Services contract (NAS10-00-001) officially awarded by NASA's Kennedy Space Center on June 16,2000 to:

Delta Launch Services, Inc.
5301 Bolsa Avenue
Huntington Beach, CA 92647-2099

NASA's total launch services budget for the MER-B campaign is approximately $68 million dollars.

The goals of the Mars Exploration Rover 2003 mission are to land a roving vehicle on Mars for science observations that will help determine the water, climatic and geological history of a site on Mars where conditions may have been favorable to the preservation of evidence of life or associated pre-biotic processes.

NASA's Mars Program is managed by the NASA Headquarters Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The MER-B spacecraft project is managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA.