NASA MISSION UPDATE
Four intriguing places on Mars have risen to the final round as NASA selects a landing site for its next Mars mission, the Mars Science Laboratory.
The agency had a wider range of possible landing sites to choose from than for any previous mission, thanks to the Mars Science Laboratory’s advanced technologies, and the highly capable orbiters helping this mission identify scientifically compelling places to explore.
Continue reading ‘JPL Narrows Sites for Next Mars Landing to Four’
USA Today reports that NASA’s massive Mars Science Laboratory is giving the U.S. space agency a huge migraine: it’s 24-percent over budget and in danger of missing its 2009 launch window.
Costs on the 2-ton Martian rover have ballooned to about $1.2 billion, an increase of $235 million over the original estimate. Engineer have grappled with problems with the spacecraft’s heat shield, motors, scientific instruments and landing system.
“We underestimated what it was going to take,” laboratory project manager Richard Cook told USA Today. “To do it right, we’re going to need more funding.”
NASA has been forced to take money from other programs to keep the rover on schedule for a 2009 launch. Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers are racing to prepare the spacecraft in time; if they miss the launch window, they will have to wait until 2011 when Earth and Mars are again properly aligned.
The Mars Science Laboratory will drive across the planet’s surface, searching for “the molecules that are precursors to life and for evidence of microbes at work,” the paper reports.
Space.com is reporting that NASA has ordered a 40 percent cut in the operating budgets for the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers over the next 18 months. The change involves a $4 million cut in the remaining FY 2008 budget and an $8 million reduction for FY 2009. It costs about $20 million annually to operate the two rovers.
NASA officials said there are no plans to “cancel” the mission of the two Mars Exploration Rovers, which have been on the Martian surface since 2004. An official told CNN that the cuts were being made to help balance overruns in the Mars Science Laboratory, which is set for launch next year. All three missions are managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Continue reading ‘NASA Orders Deep Cuts in Spirit and Opportunity Rover Budget’
Although the last decade has seen a renaissance in the exploration of Mars, the future is about as clear as one of the Red Planet’s frequent dust storms, Jeff Foust says over at The Space Review.
“The next NASA mission after MSL [Mars Science Laboratory] won’t launch until 2013, and the future after that is even murkier. NASA is also planning to shift funds from Mars research to other areas of its science programs, including other planetary missions, much to the consternation of researchers who have spent years or decades studying the Red Planet. With no firm date for human exploration of Mars—only a passing reference to it in the national space exploration policy—some are left to wonder whether the current golden age of Mars exploration is coming to an end,” Foust writes.
