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NASA plans to follow-up its Mars rover Curiosity mission with a duplicate rover that could collect and store samples for return to聽Earth, the agency's lead scientist said on Tuesday.

The new rover will use spare parts and engineering models developed for Curiosity, which is four months into a planned $2.5 billion, two-year mission on Mars to look for habitats that could have supported microbial life.

Replicating the rover's chassis, sky-crane landing system and other gear will enable聽NASA to cut the cost of the new mission to about $1.5 billion,聽John Grunsfeld, the U.S. space agency's associate administrator for science, said at the聽American Geophysical Union聽conference in聽San Francisco.

Budget shortfalls forced聽NASA to pull out of a series of joint missions with聽Europe, designed to return rock and soil samples from Mars in the 2020s.聽Europe聽instead will partner with聽Russia聽for the launch vehicle and other equipment that was to have been provided by NASA.

Grunsfeld said聽NASA will provide a key organics experiment for聽Europe's ExoMars rover, as well as engineering and mission support under the agency's proposed budget for the year beginning Oct. 1, 2013.

Details about what science instruments would be included on the new rover, whether or not it would have a cache for samples, and the landing site have not yet been determined.

NASA plans to set up a team of scientists to refine plans for the rover and issue a solicitation next summer.

罢丑别听National Academy of Sciences聽last year ranked a Mars sample return mission as its top priority in planetary science for the next decade.

"The (science) community already has come forward with a very clear message about what the content of the next Mars surface mission should be, and that is to cache the samples that will come back to聽Earth," said聽Steve Squyres听飞颈迟丑 Cornell University.

"That's really a necessary part of having this mission," he said.

(Editing by Tom Brown and Stacey Joyce)