Following up on the success of the Curiosity mission, NASA has announced plans for a new Mars rover scheduled for 2020.

Earlier this week, the world listened closely as NASA announced new findings about the soil collected by the Mars rover, Curiosity. Prior to the actual announcement there was a good deal of surrounding the possibility that the rover might have found the chemical ingredients needed to support life on the Red Planet. But at the press conference NASA officials quickly dashed those hopes and simply offered an update on the mission, along with a tantalizingly vague mention of a carbon compound of unknown origin.

Nevertheless, enthusiasm for research on Mars hasn't been dampened, and now the U.S. space agency has announced plans for a brand new Mars rover scheduled for 2020.

During a media briefing yesterday, John Grunsfeld, NASA associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, revealed that the new rover will be based on the same architecture as the Curiosity rover, and partially composed of spare parts from previous robotic vehicles.

"The Obama administration is committed to a robust Mars exploration program," NASA administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement. "With this next mission, we're ensuring America remains the world leader in the exploration of the Red Planet, while taking another significant step toward sending humans there in the 2030s."

While outlining the specifics of the photographic equipment planned for the next rover, Grunfeld expressed his excitement about gathering high quality photos from the planet's surface.

"I have on my iPad a 3D panorama that I use quite a lot of Curiosity that somebody outside of NASA stitched together of the early photos and you can explore the various sites," Grunsfeld said. "And as you move it around, the accelerometer in the iPad will shift the view and you can look down on the deck and up at the sky…it gives me a feeling as if I'm on Mars. I'd like to go to Mars."

As for the timing of the mission, NASA believes that the 2020 time frame will be optimal in terms of launch windows and overall mission preparation. The timing is also related to the cost of the mission, which is estimated to be in the range of $1.5 billion, including the launch vehicle.

"The challenge to restructure the Mars Exploration Program has turned from the seven minutes of terror for the Curiosity landing to the start of seven years of innovation," Grunsfeld said.

Before that happens, though, NASA also has its Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations (InSight) mission. The space agency that its next mission to the Red Planet will blast off in 2016. InSight will charged with drilling into the Martian topsoil to essentially take Mars' temperature and, hopefully, gain valuable knowledge about planetary development.

Next year, meanwhile, NASA will launch the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter to study the Martian upper atmosphere.