NASA Panel Finds Fault WIth Curiosity Rover Project's Focus

The Curiosity Rover that's been exploring the surface of Mars for more than two years now has a lot of fans (and quite a few headlines here on Slashdot), but not everyone feels positively toward the project. Tech Times reports that NASA revealed on Wednesday that it has renewed the funding of seven ongoing planetary exploration missions but of these, the space agency's Planetary Mission Senior Review panel, which reviewed and rated these planetary missions, was particularly critical of the Curiosity, which also happens to be the newest and the second costliest of the seven missions. The panel is disappointed that given the capabilities of the Curiosity rover, the team behind it only intends to take and analyze eight samples in two years, which translates to two samples from each of the four units it will visit during its extended mission. The Curiosity is the only NASA tool with the capabilities to detect carbon, do in situ age analysis, and measure ionizing particle flux.

Comments

Re:NASA Wasting Time and Money

[ColdWetDog]

Let's face facts that NASA is wasting a lot of earth's resources for little in exchange, considering that the earth is quickly using up valuable energy that is in the non-renewable form. With all of NASA's s scientific and technical savvy, they could be working on much more effective projects that would benefit Planet Earth's burdoned and disappearing resources.

Right you are. A governmental department that spends three quarters of one percent of the US Federal budget is 'wasting a lot of earth's resources". Sorry guy, go whine at the Department of Defense, the Homeland Security Department or the Bureau of Land Mismanagement if you want to chip away at wasted resources.

And, in point of fact, NASA does spend a lot of it's money on earth observation. Of all of those nifty satellites that catalog said resources, most of them come from NASA.

Go tilt at some other windmill.

Re:NASA bureaucracy at it again

[lgw]

For those who don't follow this stuff: the rover has tin-foil wheels, and they're getting chewed up fast (many holes and tears in them already). The problem is sharp rocks that are embedded firmly in the ground, or perhaps part of the bedrock like a'a lava - a geological feature that wasn't expected or designed for. The rover can handle sharp rocks in soil just fine, but now they're going really slowly trying to find a better path.