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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.
NASA Panel Finds Fault WIth Curiosity Rover Project's Focus
This happened with Hubble too.
Better known as 318230.
I thought they haven't arrived at the primary target yet. Sampling secondary targets slows down progress toward the primary target.
I can see rationale for "not dwelling" at secondary targets. If these secondary targets are somehow deemed primary or prime targets (not stated), that's a different matter, but doing so detracts from the original primary target.
It seems somebody is using "bean counter" logic whereby you judge quantity instead of quality.
Table-ized A.I.
Can we please retitle this story to "Armchair Quarterbacks Randomly Decide They Don't Like Curiosity"? Because, in all seriousness, do you think a that a bunch of rocket-scientists and engineers are like "nah.... let's just point the camera at clouds and do nothing with this huge multi-million dollar rover". Far more likely that the engineers behind the project are doing everything they physically can with curiosity, but this review panel doesn't like the reality of what can be done. I can think of a great Dilbert comic or two that cover this.
dorks don't want anyone else to play with their expensive toys...that's one way to look at this...
NASA is awesome...because they are the institution that goes to space...their **task** is awesome
**execution** has always been an area for improvement...NASA can be awesome and still have major problems!!!
it comes down to bean counters vs explorers...aka ***risk analysis***
the prototypical example of this is the Mercury astronauts and their crusade to include the human in the mission
the old saying goes "paralysis by analysis"
however you contextualize the problem, the root cause is faulty risk assessment...the entire notion of risk assessment in project management has become a clusterfuck of cause/effect errors & voodoo quantification of non-quant factors
NASA isn't alone in this, of course...**every beauracracy** tends to have these problems...
i'm not anti-NASA...I'm pro human spaceflight and human space exploration...i love these rovers too...let's put them to work and not be afraid to break them!
Thank you Dave Raggett
The biggest problem the scientific community has had is that the Rover does only science that has been done all before; It could easily be detecting life or past life or dead life from a thousand years ago.. but they refuse to do that sort of science even when they have outfitted the rover with the tools to do it, due in part to various political factions putting pressure on them NOT to do the science; Science is literately being censored and hats the most terrible thing.
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.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Tie their pay to productivity and provide bonuses to exceeding explicit, ambitious goals.
... to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.
Good idea. Maybe we could make a reality TV show about that.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
This seems like the manned spaceflight directorate (i.e the pork Directorate) whining about the science directorate (i.e. real science and exploration) because the planetary science guys are getting all the publicity and excitement while they cannot get anyone interested in their pork manned projects like the ISS, SLS, Orion, or their ludicrous asteroid capture missions.
.... in that it's extended mission is coming before the primary mission. However if they don't do something about the wear and tear on the rover's tire treads, it may never get to the primary mission.