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A Deep Space Primer
phil reed writes "With the latest Mars missions still in the news, people might be curious about what it takes to actually run a deep space mission: how a spacecraft is designed, how the communications are handled, what kind of project management is in place to make it all work. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory has a primer online that gives broad general coverage of all aspects of putting a satellite into orbit and how to manage it once it's there. Fascinating reading, with lots of links to more detail."
It's nice to see that space exploration has come so far in my lifetime. When I was a boy during WWII, travel to Mars, even by machines, was just science fiction, and the stuff of magazine covers. Most of the world's scientists and engineers were at work developing weapons of war, and for some of them, rockets, high altitude airplanes, etc. were allowed projects that laid the foundation for today's space miracles.
Would you really want them back?
The objective of these missions is to learn more about mars.. if we were just interplanetary joyriding, then, yes, I'd want the rover back -- but that's not the case here.
Besides, the rovers are only a small portion of the cost of the mission - even if we could magically get these back for free, it would be worth the effort to build new rovers that incorporate the things learned on previous missions and provide new and different capabilities.
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If you think the cost is mind boggling, you haven't seen what it would cost to if they were designed to return to earth when they were done.
Humans have yet to perform any "Deep space" exploration.
The Voyager missions come the closest, but still remain fairly near home, on any meaningful interstellar scale.
The linked article discusses interplanetary exploration. Quite a bit of a difference.