Lockheed Gets $485M From NASA To Create MAVEN Craft

coondoggie writes to tell us that Lockheed Martin has landed a $485 million contract to create the spacecraft for NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) project. "MAVEN is the second mission in NASA's Mars Scout Program — a series of small, low-cost, principal investigator-led missions to the Red Planet, NASA said. The Phoenix Mars Lander was the first mission under the program. Lockheed Martin is the industry partner on the Phoenix mission. It designed and built the spacecraft, and also provided flight operations and currently surface operations for the lander. The mission has been extended through Sept. 30, 2008."

Comments

MAVEN not MAVAN

[Anonymous Coward]

It's MAVEN (In the article), not MAVAN (which is in the title)

Re:MAVEN not MAVAN

[clarkkent09]

No no, this one must be called MAVAN. MAVEN is a completely different project, albeit with a very similar name and identical goals and budget.

After all, slashdot had an article about MAVEN only couple of days ago: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/16/0123253 I don't think it's possible that they would post another one about the exact same project. That would be a dupe!

No need to spend that much

[elrous0]

Forget that MAVAN shit. If you're ready to part with gas, grass, or ass, you can ride in MYVAN for free.

Re:No need to spend that much

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget that MAVAN shit. If you're ready to part with gas, grass, or ass, you can ride in MYVAN for free.

Should be no problem, I had mexican for lunch.

What no massive bid war?

[alta]

So, we're not going to have a highly publicized 6 month bid process, and then give it to the company with the better plane, and then take it away because the local company is crying about sour grapes? And then have them both re-bid, and then cancel that project because it looks again like the company that start with a B is starting ti whine AGAIN because they just can't compete in the competitive market because their damn plane just isn't good enough. So we scrap the whole damn idea till "later" and make our guys fly around in 30 year old gas filled bombs with outdated electronics hoping that one doesn't fuckin' blow up over a residential area?

What's the fun in that? I didn't get a notice to bid! I'm going to congress!

Re:Low-cost

[Martin Blank]

It's in comparison to the older programs such as Viking, Galileo, and Cassini, which cost several billion each in current dollars (but which did their jobs incredibly well). The move to smaller, faster, cheaper followed the loss of the Mars Observer.

What NASA management didn't factor into smaller, faster, cheaper is that you can normally pick only two of the three.

Re:It's time to defund NASA

[Bruce Perens]

Yeah, that's what they said in the sixties about the moon

So, what's the telephone area code for the moon, Mr. Anonymous?

Oh, there is none? Why, because nobody has been there for 40 years. The United States does not have the competence to operate space research.

Re:It's time to defund NASA

[RobBebop]

It's not very clear to me that we learned a lot about manned missions since 1969.

Telescopes, rovers, and orbiters have yielded good knowledge. No?

Orion *is* a big Apollo lander. I recall that it will be capable of landing 3 man on the surface (a 50% increase!). If you were looking for an alternative type of lander, maybe its possible that they got it right in the 60s. On Earth, we the vehicles that are capable of landing include have helicopters and airplanes and not much else. And these don't seen like good ideas to me. Maybe this? The big improvement, though, is Ares V which should enable us to do a big more than just flying to the Moon or Mars and back. With the materials that we'll be able to bring things will get real exciting (you just wait).