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NASA Plans On Bringing Back Martian Rocks
FortKnox writes: "In this Y! article, NASA is planning on sending a robotic mission to Mars in an attempt to bring back Martian stuff (rocks, soil, etc...). Looks like its a tough mission to plan for; they are calling it 'Apollo without the astronauts.'" I would like to go to Mars in person, but if they're spending my money already, I'd like them to please use robots for a while.
Here is the lab of Jet propulsion labs that does the robot thingie. This is the software to test the robustness of the robots. NASA has learnt from several failures apparently.
A picture of martian rock with some explanations, if you're interested. Along with some interesting rock with bug patterns!
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Here is the link of the actual Mars mission along with the status and risks. And check out all the robotics projects behind the scene. Cool...
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NASA, and other international groups, has already thought of that and long ago addressed it. Even the Apollo missions were carried out so that the Moon rocks were kept in a quarantine, at negative relative pressure. Scientists worked with them via those glovey things you see in labs. Admittedly, the Apollo mission's planetary protection was done rather half-heartly (I won't regale you with stories, here). But Mars is taken a lot more seriously, as is Europa (Europa is the reason that Galileo is being sent to crash into Jupiter while we still have control of it, rather than let it continue to orbit indefinately). Any Mars mission has be decontaminated to where they're gauged as having less than 1 change in 10,000 of contaminating Mars. Martians samples are to be treated as hazardous until we are certain they are not.
- The California 210/30 freeway extension costs approximately one billion for 28.2 miles of freeway. [The Big Dig in Boston is over 10 times more expensive, for you easterners.]
- The federal government spends about one billion to pay interest on the federal debt each day.
Really, one billion dollars isn't as much money as you think it is. It's enough to pay 1,000 people $100,000/year for 10 years...and you have to figure that it takes at least 10 years and 1,000 people to build, support, and fly a spacecraft to Mars and back. Not to mention materials costs.[www.dot.ca.gov]
[www.publicdebt.treas.gov]
"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want."
NASA would love to do a Mars sample return. However in reality no such mission is going to happen anytime soon. Last October NASA outlined its long term plan for Mars exploration with a sample return slated to start in 2014. However recently it became known that the October plan is now more or less dead. The only Mars mission not touched at this time is the 2003 twin rover mission (MER 2003). The 2005 orbiter mission is still a tentative go, however everything after that is up in the air.
NASA's budget is being used to pay for the ballooning space station cost overruns which means other programs get the axe. The space station is at least 4 billion over budget. NASA's budget is about 14 billion. Do the Math. The Bush administration has told NASA to get the station budget under control. So NASA has to cut a lot of programs including Mars. Look to the Europeans to potentially do a Mars sample return first with some NASA participation.
Useful Link: A Year of Mars News: It was the worst of times; it was the best of times.