Group Plans to Bring Martian Sample to Earth

sm62704 (mcgrew) writes "New Scientist has a story about IMARS (the International Mars Architecture for Return Samples) planning to bring samples of Martian soil to earth. The robotic mission would be a needed precursor to manned trips to the red planet. Also, international cooperation is necessary since the US has already nixed bankrolling manned Mars missions."

Comments

It's Robotic!

[FroBugg]

Also, international cooperation is necessary since the US has already nixed bankrolling manned Mars missions.

This is a robotic mission, so would be perfectly fine under the NASA funding rules. If you're pissed about the rule, go complain in the thread we already had about it. Don't inject it into stories where it has no real bearing.

The actual article itself contains this completely different and more appropriate explanation for the need for international efforts:

International cooperation in the project is important because it is likely to carry a global-size price tag. NASA previously backed away from its own plans for a sample return mission due to budget overruns in the space shuttle programme.

"It's not an inexpensive proposition, and the ability to share the technical challenges and the costs across nations is very important for the success of this," says meeting attendee Lisa May, NASA's lead programme executive for Mars sample return missions.

Re:Why?

[FroBugg]

The Viking missions sampled soil on-site with the tools that were built into the landers. This mission is planning to bring samples to Earth, where we can perform much more detailed analysis with tools that cannot easily be sent to another planet and operated remotely.

Re:I wonder if we should.

[SilentBob0727]

What really happens is that there are X sperm and Y sperm. Actually, XY is only what happens in most mammals. There are at least three other prominent sex-determination systems among biological organisms, including X0 (females have two X's, males have one), ZW (W encodes femaleness), and Haplodiploidy (gametes develop into males, zygotes into females): See here for more information.

Reptilian gender is environmentally, not genetically, determined. Of course, dinosaurs weren't strictly reptilian. Nevertheless, Crichton was not describing the XY system. He was using his knowledge of exotic sex-determination systems that aren't commonly known among laypeople in order to spin a good yarn.

I do agree his work is rife with pseudoscience. But this one isn't that inaccurate.

Man on Mars

[DynaSoar]

The US has not "nixed bankrolling" for manned Mars missions. Projects for this are still in progress. For instance http://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/features/troutman-architecture.html

Read NASA's site and NASA watch for the real news.