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NASA Mars Rover Opportunity Lifts Off
Joost Schuur writes "At 11:18 PM EDT on Monday, Opportunity, the second of 2 NASA Mars Exploration Rovers took off aboard a Boeing Delta 2 Heavy rocket after several delays and begun its 305 million mile trip to the Red Planet, where it will join its sister vehicle Spirit, which launched June 10th. Spirit and Opportunity will land on opposite sides of Mars, travelling up to 40 meters a day, and use a series of instruments to search for water, including the Rock Abrasion Tool, which will grind into rocks to give scientists a peak inside. Things are going to get crowded next January in orbit, as both NASA missions join the European Mars Express mission also launched this month and the Japanese Nozomi probe, which would finally complete its troublesome 5 year journey. Those stuck on Earth can take advantage of the closest Mars opposition in 60,000 years and watch with a telescope, or follow the images provided by the International MarsWatch 2003 group."
So many links from so many different sources, and so thorough, congrats to the poster!
Maybe I'm being a bit idealistic, but I think the different space programs from around the world should work together to get to Mars and do research.
Although if you look at the ISS, that has been hampered with cost and other problems from each country. Also it could limit the research and intelligence that is gather.
6 on way, 1/2 dozen the other
Art by Mindy Herman, my wife.
I do not think that spectacular science is necessarily serious science. My guess is that most "serious science" takes place in anonym places, where scientists work during years on things not as impressive as a rocket launch.
I'm not saying that the Mars exploration is not important, I'm only worried about science without big budgets and TV cameras being considered "not serious".
> 7% increase in NASA's budget for the next 10 years
7% increase once and that 10 years long or
every year a 7% increase, for ten years?
That makes a *BIG* difference. Does anyone want to let NASA's budget grow exponentially?
People are better than robots at exploring a planet.
I'm not sure how valid of a claim that is. Certainly, right now our probes aren't that great, mainly because there is little actual autonomy. However, in the near future, probes will be built to handle major decisionmaking on their own. Our best hope for exploring the most of Mars is to send thousands of small autonomous probes that will do the looking around for us. This could be done for roughly the same cost as the manned mission, without the PR risk (yes, I hate it but it's very true) that manned missions currently represent.
I work at the Jet Propulsion Lab, and many of the robotics technologies that are currently being persued there should give us the capability to collect huge amounts of useful data on Mars in the next 20 years or so.
Is manned flight expensive? Well not really, but the price/performance ratio isn't that great compared to what will be done in the next 20 years with robotics probles (remember economy of scale, 1000 probes isn't much more expensive to build than 1).