Mars Exploration Program various components of the EDL systems on Earth-based testing. However, the costs of reproducing environments in which this data would be relevant in terms of Mars' environment are considerably high, resulting in testing being purely ground-based or simulating results of tests involving technologies derived from past missions. InSight, launched from Earth May 5, 2018, the lander touched down on Mars November 26, 2018 on Elysium Planitia. Mars exploration missions, as do most NASA missions, can be fairly costly. For example, NASA's "Curiosity" rover (landed on Mars in Aug 2012) has a budget exceeding $2.5 billion. NASA also has goals of
Crewed Mars rover are a component of many designs for a human mission to the planet Mars. For example, the Austere Human Missions to Mars proposal proposed including two rovers on its unmanned power and logistics cargo lander. Each rover could hold a crew of two in a pressurized environment, with power coming from a Stirling radioisotope generator. Mars One, a Mars colonization plan intended to be funded by a TV show, plans an unpressurized crewed rover capable of traveling 80 km (50 miles). They said a possible supplier was Astrobotic Technology. The Manned Mars Exploration Rover (MMER) won a design award in