Quote from: MATTBLAK on 01/15/2014 03:51 amI want a Ceres lander equipped with a very big drill!I want a Neptune orbiter with a Triton rover...
I want a Ceres lander equipped with a very big drill!
Modern Venus radar mapper
Quote from: vjkane on 01/15/2014 06:13 pmModern Venus radar mapperI think the Indians are likely to do this. Maybe more likely to do it than the U.S.
Quote from: Blackstar on 01/15/2014 06:37 pmQuote from: vjkane on 01/15/2014 06:13 pmModern Venus radar mapperI think the Indians are likely to do this. Maybe more likely to do it than the U.S.1-Good joint mission with NASA, since the data volumes are pretty high and the DSN would be a godsend. 2-Russia and the US are also investigating coordinated Venus missions for the early 2020s.
To some, not as sexy as a rover, but to me it is way more exciting!
Quote from: kevin-rf on 05/20/2014 12:32 amTo some, not as sexy as a rover, but to me it is way more exciting! I'm not going to say it's exciting, but it will check an important box in planetary science. We have not done a seismic mission since Apollo, and those seismometers were ancient technology. This is much more advanced. And once we do this mission it is likely to open up a lot of questions that will lead to new scientific theories and discoveries. It's going to be like shining a light into a dark corner of a room for the first time.
I thought it was longitude and it has something to do with the relays, not direct line of sight.
Curiosity and InSight would have to split uplink opportunities to the polar orbiters, which would be overhead both at pretty much the same time. ISTM Curiosity will get priority because of the drive-planning tempo and large data volume.
I don't know what will happen with the wheels degradation on Curiosity. But JPL has a tendency to design rovers that slightly outlive their requires mission life.
Btw, now that we see this map of where they can actually land, what would have they done if they had gone with the three stations proposal? Abandon the EDL and move to other design? Retrofit ALHAT? Go nuclear?
Quote from: baldusi on 05/22/2014 01:33 pmBtw, now that we see this map of where they can actually land, what would have they done if they had gone with the three stations proposal? Abandon the EDL and move to other design? Retrofit ALHAT? Go nuclear?I don't know what restricted them to that small landing site. It might not be the seismic sensor, but might be the heat transfer sensor instead. So maybe they could have taken more sites.But the restriction has something to do with the kind of rock that they want to access. They think they can only find it at that location.If I ever run into Banerdt, I'll try to ask him about what he thinks of doing a network and how he would do it knowing what he does now. I won't otherwise bother him by email because my rule of thumb is that if somebody is a PI on a mission in development, they're going to be too busy to respond to email and I should just stay out of their way.