NASA is taking the first step towards the ultimate scientific goal for the red planet, Mars Sample Return.
Quote from: Blackstar on 12/15/2012 12:14 pmNASA is taking the first step towards the ultimate scientific goal for the red planet, Mars Sample Return. Since this would be the "ultimate" goal, one wonders whether or not there would be a "penultimate" goal after bringing home these few pounds of rocks. And after that, an "ultra-penultimate" goal? "Super-ultra-double-plus-good-penultimate"? Are they saying this be the last robotic Mars mission? I think not.Just from a grammatical standpoint, the word "ultimate" is being overused. I wish they'd quit hyping stuff.
Not to split hairs, but the penultimate goal is the one that comes before the ultimate goal rather than after it.
The rover announcement was a major, and welcome, surprise for Mars scientists. But it raises many questions. For starters, considering that Grunsfeld only expected to have $800 million available for a 2020 mission, how is NASA able to afford a $1.5 billion rover? NASA officials would only say that the money is “already in the budget.” But does this mean that it is being cut from other programs like New Frontiers, Discovery, and operational missions like Cassini? The planetary decadal survey addressed the entire solar system and one of its major recommendations was that NASA should seek to balance its program. If the 2020 rover comes at the expense of exploring the rest of the solar system, NASA will have simply found another way to subvert the planetary decadal survey, and the planetary science community’s wishes.
For me - layman getting news from space websites and forums - it was a lot more sinister than that.MSL then had serious problems with money - and someone wanted to put some fancy, costly and useless bondoogle on it, getting away with it only because money for cacher was from different pot. I was rather... annoyed with this and thought this money would be better spend helping MSL's financial troubles instead of making toy destined to stroke Stern's ego. Fortunately, someone saner axed it.
Is someone going to talk about repurposing the ejected off-set weights, too?
...Attempting to keep the lid on MSL overruns is what cost Stern his job.The minimal sample cache was not driven by ego. It was a sincere attempt to make some progress towards Mars Sample Return. ...
I heard Stern himself explain it. And the money came from his discretionary account ... (... he allocated $2.5 million for the cacher). I know some people thought it was a way to claim that MSL/Curiosity was doing sample caching when it was not. Who knows? It was a pretty minor aspect of the whole project.
The minimal sample cache was not driven by ego. It was a sincere attempt to make some progress towards Mars Sample Return.
HOUSTON — While it sizes up high-value landing site candidates for its next Mars rover, NASA is developing strategies for protecting dozens of potential rock and soil samples cached on the red planet for harvest and return to Earth at some time in the future. The Mars 2020 science objectives are to reach a landing site with ancient astrobiological potential and geological diversity, look for rocks with high potential for biosignatures, and acquire and preserve samples of rocks and ...
Mars 2020 rover may get a drone for scouting. Can potentially triple rovers daily travel distance.http://www.popsci.com/nasa-to-test-drone-scout-for-mars-2020-rover?src=SOC&dom=tw