NASA, European Space Agency Want To Go To Mars

coondoggie writes "NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are aiming to cooperate on all manner of robotic orbiters, landers and exploration devices for a future trip to Mars. Specifically, NASA and ESA recently agreed to consider the establishment of a new joint initiative to define and implement their scientific, programmatic, and technological goals for the exploration of Mars. The program would focus on several launch opportunities with landers and orbiters conducting astrobiological, geological, geophysical, climatological, and other high-priority investigations and aiming at returning samples from Mars in the mid-2020s."

Comments

Re:Cooperation

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt it. ESA will defenitely work with SI units. And I assume NASA wants to use their old units for their old stuff. However, if they cooperate on a component level, this should not be a big problem as long as the systems are not integrated. For example rocket from NASA and rover from ESA.

NASA has used Metric for a long, long time now. It was a subcontractor who used Imperial that screwed up the Mars lander.