Curiosity Lands On Mars
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Sends Back Image of Curiosity Rover Descent, SpaceRef
“NASA released an image from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which was taken during the descent of the Mars Science Laboratory with the Curiosity rover and shows the deployed parachute and the spacecraft as it prepares to land.”
NASA Lands Car-Size Rover Beside Martian Mountain
“NASA’s most advanced Mars rover Curiosity has landed on the Red Planet. The one-ton rover, hanging by ropes from a rocket backpack, touched down onto Mars Sunday to end a 36-week flight and begin a two-year investigation. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft that carried Curiosity succeeded in every step of the most complex landing ever attempted on Mars, including the final severing of the bridle cords and flyaway maneuver of the rocket backpack.”
Video: Relive the Mars Curiosity Rover Landing on Mars , SpaceRef
“In a technological feat never before tried the Mars Science Laboratory with the Curiosity Rover landed on Mars on time with apparently no apparent glitches and because the Odyssey orbiter was in a good alignment, a few pictures came in right away.”
NASA’s New Mars Rover Sends Higher-Resolution Image
“About two hours after landing on Mars and beaming back its first image, NASA’s Curiosity rover transmitted a higher-resolution image of its new Martian home, Gale Crater. Mission Control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., received the image, taken by one of the vehicle’s lower-fidelity, black-and-white Hazard Avoidance Cameras – or Hazcams.”
Keith’s note: Mars Science Laboratory has successfully landed on Mars. Images have been received. Raw images will be posted at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/. According to Presidential science advisor John Holdren: “There is a one ton automobile sized piece of American ingenuity sitting on the surface of Mars”
Went like clockwork – Congrats JPL / MSL team!
Outstanding job! Congratulations to all at JPL.
This is fantastic! Congratulations on a job well done to everyone who worked on this program!
Watched the landing live. Goosebumps. Took me back to the Apollo 11 and Surveyor landings.
A remarkable achievement! Engineering at its best!
thank you nasawatch for keeping jpl/nasa on their toes to make sure it went smoothly 😉
Amazing! I let my 10 year old daughter stay up to watch and she was mesmerized. They made it look easy.
I was amazed they were able to get images of successful landing moments after (heck, telemetry is gold by itself). As one of the speakers here at Ames Research Center, it was opened to the public, said Hollywood makes it look easy but it is not. NASA does hard things otherwise it is not worth doing. Congrats to those all who gave up personal time and pulled countless “80 hour work week” to make it work.
Folks:
Curiosity’s landing bodes well for Spacex ‘Red Dragon’ landings with it’s eight outboard landing engines being a very similar configuration. Less EDL steps too for Dragon.
tinker
seriously? why are you so myopically focused on elon musk that you think an accomplishment like MSL landing some how relates to some variation of dragon that’s on paper??? really??? are you dating Musk? an awful lot of people worked very hard on MSL from it’s design to it’s launch (on the most reliable highest performing launching in the US) to it’s course corrections along the way to its entry to powered decent and landing, and spacex was in no way connected with any of it. and they won’t be contracted for anything like it until they have a MUCH longer track record than they currently have displayed. check into reality land some day.
Outstanding…well said.
Mr. fritters
This is a wonderful day and a wonderful week.
How can we take whats was learned here and drop the price to less than half a billion soon!!!! Until thats done what happened today will not be reality again. So I’m glad that Tinker points out what he does. We need an affordable future.
Go!!!! baby/NASA Goooo!!!
George H. Worthington IV
RF:
Spacex will land a Dragon on Mars in less development time and at a fraction of Curiosity. Don’t forget, NASA will share this EDL data with Spacex. That’ll make things even easier for them. I’m merely basing my ‘claim’ on a baseline of Spacex’s previous accomplishments (since there are no other companies I can use to compare).
As far as being myopic, you’re right. I’m legally blind, but ‘narrow focus’ has, as far as I know, never extended to my mind. 🙂
tinker
lololol Blind here too. Cant read the first letter on the chart since 1963
Mr. McGoo
share what data? if you want to enter Mars you’ll need subject matter experts on it. just asking JPL/LM denver how they did it isn’t enough. but LOL i at least appreciate the fact that you admit spacex is only capable of taking something someone else has done and tried to improve the cost. sort of like what the Japanese did with TVs and radios in the 70s. well i sure hope they continue to have pig space develop capability for them so they’ll have something to copy later…
that’s hilarious right there……..
“sort of like what the Japanese did with TVs and radios in the 70s.”
Interesting analogy. You recall what happened to the US electronics industry in the following years?
Missed the point Tinker. RF was pointing out that this is a thread about the accomplishments of MSL and JPL and yes NASA too. The fact that SpaceX has to be brought up by you so frequently does indeed get tiring. Yes they will do everything better and cheaper and and and… But honestly it’s not necessary to water down JPLs accomplishment by bringing up how SpaceX will do it in less development time and for a fraction of the budget. Give them their well deserved time of fame without shoving Elon’s projected accomplishments on stage with them.
“Spacex will land a Dragon on Mars in less development time and at a fraction of Curiosity.”
With the Dragon costing over $1billion just to get to LEO (and this before they’ve demonstrated any LAS capability), what factual data do you base your statement that they could land a Dragon for a fraction of $2.5 billion?
“Dragon costing over $1billion just to get to LEO (and this before they’ve demonstrated any LAS capability)”
You’re way off. At the time Dragon first reached LEO, SpaceX had spent a total of approximately $800 million on everything. That includes Dragon, Falcon 9, Falcon 1, several new engine designs, launch facilities, etc. Dragon was only a fraction of that — far less than $1 billion.
Chris:
Good point.
Folks:
Dragon/Falcon to orbit cost a third of MSL and they already had a launch vehicle and that is a valid point. Still, quite an accomplishment… and probably one of the last high budget probes ever flown. Seems to me, from the posts above, the old way of space development was based of fear instead of innovation. No more…
tinker
Any way to use MSL to do a sample return??? two years to pull it off till the nuke dies right?? Wouldnt that be a high speed/high risk mission worth trying in two years?? Even to just get a few rocks in orbit for late pickup 4 years from now???
NASA works with Spacex and other companies to speed dragon LAS/ mars landing system to try to land a dragon near MSL in 2 years thus speeding us faster to human space flight and Mars sample return.
couldn’t you put a small rocket in the dragon that you launch out the nose cone, that could get a few pounds of rocks to mars orbit.
Wow killing two birds with one Mars stone what a novel idea! and if it fails the boobie prize is American human space flight sooner. lololol
JPL’s Pete Theisinger said at this mornings presser that he expected the rover to operate for a minimum of four years, and implied that it could last even longer. Apparently the various parts were tested to lifetimes three or four times the two-year nominal mission duration, but none to destruction, indicating a lot of reserve capacity.And, the nuclear power supply should be good for far longer than a mere two years.
well lets make a Sample return plan soon 🙂
could the same sheild shell and all that be used again and get a lander down there with out spacex too ???
Lets go rock throwing lol
What’s stopping SpaceX from submitting a firm fixed price proposal to do such a mission?
what’s stopping them is that they know most of their stuff is hype. they haven’t conquered LEO yet and even spacex probably knows that there aren’t any papers they can read to ensure they can enter mars or any other planet. even a few people at spacex know that the only way to reuse a heat shield is to design and build the exact same SC on the same trajectory that MSL had. and to waver from that means more than just reading somebody’s AIAA paper it means having a real actual subject matter expert in planetary entry/re-entry. so far they’ve gotten away with reading papers and asking NASA SME’s if their tps is thick enough. LM denver isn’t going to help them with what these jahoos are proposing and therefore they can’t do it…
George,
While I think sample return is a great idea, short of using a manned mission to do it, it is really something that has to be designed for from the outset; there are too many simple but insurmountable hurdles in trying to make it happened after the fact.
For example, since there are no “return sample canisters” in MSL (that I know of), you’d have to store all of your samples right in the on-board lab, but there’s no provision for that. Also, even if you had the storage, before you could return it you’d have to disconnect the whole lab from the rover, while keeping it perfectly sealed, and temperature and humidity controlled, which would require the equivalent of human hands and tools to accomplish, as well as a clean room, which aren’t on site.
But let’s assume we could somehow get all of that done and into a package waiting for pickup: you’d have to design a purpose-built retrieval spacecraft (and mission); launch it and send it to Mars; land it close enough to the MSL to meet up; integrate the package into the return vehicle as a payload; and bring it home and land it in tact — all on a very tight schedule with no delays or second chances.
I’m not trying to be pessimistic, again, but I see too many hurdles to overcome, some with no foreseeable answers. It does suggest to me a couple of things for the future consideration, though; 1) for all sampling/science planetary missions from now on, use a standardized “storage” system for post experiment and contingency samples so that they “might” be picked up later; and 2) time (two-way) manned Mars missions such that there are return packages on the surface (near by) waiting to be returned to Earth with the returning manned mission(s). Waste not, want not. Just off-the-cuff ideas.
A couple of other pluses for returning samples with a manned mission are: 1) the max thrust and vibration rates during a manned flight tend to be lower than for an unmanned mission, and you want your samples to be returned as found, not smashed up; and 2) if it is a long mission with a sophisticated return vehicle, there may be an opportunity to do some science during the return trip, which relieves the boredom.
Keep those good ideas coming.
Steve
Steve
The time is now to start launching a dragon to mars ever 2 years, even if the first one is just to crash it. Each flight you make improvements.
lol Mr. C incremental approach to Mars Science robot landing human landing whatever?? Note to the world Spacex is sending a flight to Mars every two years. Send your mission plans to Spacex and copies to NASA
lol
MARS Dragon LAB
Red dragon whatever lolol
Steve lol the world has been talking about sample return for decades now????
and they didn’t send a rock basket??? lololol
Maybe Curiosity should look for the 150 shuttle ET tanks, I bet they re hiddin on Mars lololol
Lets get on with it!!!
Tick Pilot
I just feel so damned proud.
Awesome,very awesome. Monumental achievement to behold.
That now makes 7 successes out of 8 landing attempts *by NASA/JPL* . All the more reason to ignore or refute the ridiculous notion of “only 1 in 3 Mars probes succeed”. That was always spurious, as NASA/JPL have their own heritage of design and quality control which goes back to the Viking Landers – heck probably back to Mariner 9 – and which should not be lumped together with the likes of Phobos-Grunt or similar underfunded and under-supervised disasters from other nations with totally different heritages and approaches. The JPL landing successes are only rightly compared with the failures, i.e. MPL in 1999. BTW I am not even a US citizen; I’m overseas. This is not about patriotism but IMHO about simple common sense.
Actually Viking was managed by Langley in Virginia, not JPL.
Thanks for the correction. All the same, Langley and JPL are/were both directly connected to NASA heritage whereas the other nations were not, so my point still stands IMHO.
Actually Daniel,
I think we should have dropped this issue long ago, since aside from those recent missions that failed because they were so financially strangled (2 NASA missions under Goldin, and Beagle), it’s been a long while since a major interplanetary mission that got out of Earth orbit went of to fail at its destination. I think those days are well behind us and no longer relevant.
Steve
I got up last night to watch the coverage (thank you FoxNews). Fantastic job NASA!!!
CNN had live coverage too! And interviews. Way to go cable news.
My complaint with CNN is they talked to much. It was difficult to hear mission control with all the talking heads talking.
Yeah it wasn’t top notch reporting but good to see they had it and made an effort. I just switched to it see if they had it and saw them and Fox. I was mostly on my HTPC with the NASAJPL ustream video.
I can read the actual news elsewhere, from either official sites or traditional news sources. I came here to see the downside. Come on Keith, where’s the cynical, pessimistic post about how this is all a huge boondoggle / could have been done cheaper / step in the wrong direction / they screwed up the public relations with too many websites that temporarily confused you. How long before you post something complaining about how they’re handling things, because you like to whine? I give it 3 more hours before the bile returns.
Someone did not get enough sleep last night. Go bother another website.
So many posters here (on this thread and the other one) seemed to be rooting for a failure so they could have something to complain about. Just be happy that they were proven wrong, and enjoy the fruits of MSL’s success. Go MSL! Go JPL! Go NASA!
Name a single post by anyone on this site that was “rooting for failure”. I haven’t seen anything like that here.
What I have seen is concern about a possible failure. That’s part of a healthy open discussion. It’s not “rooting for failure”. It’s part of what helps avoid failure.
In the end analysis, they had it psyched out. Doubting Thomases, myself included, thought it way too complicated of a landing. However, the NASA/JPL group was evidently thorough and technically proficient to build and then program the landing device that at first thought bordered on the ridiculous. So much for laymen doubts far from the heat of battle!
It is refreshing to hear and see this kind of news in a world gone mad with crime and senseless violence. It lifts up spirits and reaffirms that with hard work and meticlous knowledge, astounding things can be accomplished. Just my thoughts, – Ralphy.
For half the cost of a Nimitz class super carrier they damn well should have succeeded.
I do think it was awesome, and a better use of funds than for a lot of other things.
Dennis:
Good point about the cost comparison. Kinda puts things in perspective, don’ it. Spacex could probably develop their entire Mar Colonization Program for the cost of either too.
tinker
Guys,
I think considering the cost comparison as a stand-alone factor is misleading. Yes, it’s a lot of money; but ask yourselves: 1) how many entities have built and used something comparable to MSL as opposed the number who have built carriers?; and 2) why did they all build carriers instead of MSLs? The “worth” of the program certainly cannot be measured in dollars alone, and neither can its chances of success.Steve
Wow, that was a great landing. I certainly was a little worried but I also knew this team worked extremely hard to get everything right. See what a proper sized budget gets you?
What a fantastic job!! A great day for JPL, NASA and our country!!
After watching his live interview after the landing last night, I have to say I am not the least bit impressed by Obama’s science advisor, John Holdren . While he was dishing out the political platitudes, he got a lot of his facts wrong about the history of the space program — like when he said only America has landed and can land probes on other worlds. Someone please remind him of the Soviet’s Venera landers at Venus and ESA’s Huygens lander at Titan that hitchhiked on Cassini, and the Japanese touching down on a comet and retrieving a piece of of it.
Holdren does not know Space. So by default, he can’t really be doing a stellar job of advising his boss on same.
Today would be a very good day for us civilians to demand our Presidential and Congressional candidates lay out their hard and fast positions on the future of space flight. Especially in the wake of the Tea Party types storming the gates. No weasel words; no ducking the issue. What is your stand on American spaceflight today and going forward ?
Prreface it by saying ” I’m full of Curiousity about your stance on space flight…”
That’s nitpicking. So Holdren used the word “probe” instead of “rover”. In the excitement of the moment, which at JPL in particular must have been awesome, that’s forgivable. Judging a Presidential Science Advisor on that slip, and the degree to which he “knows space” and is qualified to advise the President is just silly.
FWIW, I thought Holdren made some good comments about the importance of Curiosity to the nation. Comments which struck me that indeed, he does have a pretty good knowledge of what’s important to the nation about space.
With regard to one Presidential candidate, who happens to be the incubment, he has spoken passionately about the importance of space science, which is exactly what Curiosity represents, and his budgets largely reflect that passion. He walks like he talks. What has the other candidate said about space science? I’m full of Curiosity about that! Curiosity doesn’t represent “space flight” in the human scheme of things, and in many respects shows what we don’t need humans for at Mars (EDL in particular, so far).
Helen:
I’m with you on your first point. Standing still, drivin’ ’round or flying through space, it’s still technically a space ‘probe’. (reverse nitpicking?)
tinker
Gosh, it is to bad that the “boss” isn’t getting stellar information, by default, about space. If their was only someone the President could .. you know .. appoint, someone else with a more specialized deeper understanding about space issues.
sighs .. it’s to bad the US doesn’t form some kind of agency, in the executive branch, that could advise the President about space…hhhmmm what could we call such an agency?
SpaceX?
JPL is a very expensive place to get work done, but as this landing showed, their engineering, QC and risk management disciplines are stellar. Today’s kudos are well earned!
Perhaps the most important NASA success of the decade. Very exciting and very successful. There are really few other big missions with single moment crescendo’s like this one even in the planning for the coming decade.
Kudos also to the JPL team on the coverage of their mission control during landing-the cameras and microphones right in the face of their controllers communicated that its real and a human mission.
I’m a bit perplexed by all of the hype before landing about the likelihood of failure. I would have liked to see more about how comprehensive the testing program was.
Another important aspect is how far the landers/rovers have come in terms of technology.
Now, after the successful landing I hope to see comprehensive and serious content on what we know about Mars and what we want to find out, and now is the right time for NASA to depict when, how and why our eventual goal is to land humans on Mars. There will never be a better opportunity to communicate this than today. Maybe its forthcoming in the next few weeks?
Littrow,
If NASA had only to deal with the public, I’d agree with you; strike while the iron is hot; this is the ideal moment to talk of bigger things. But NASA is not dealing only with the pliable, plastic public. They have the foolish old farts in Congress to deal with, and therefore have to be very careful what they suggest, even at this best of times. Around Congress, if you somehow manage to not shoot yourself in the foot, there’ll always be someone there with a shotgun to make the shot for you. I’m afraid that NASA’s next chance to shine on a large scale won’t be until a certain collection of congress people retire and die off. Let’s hope it’s not too late by then. Sorry for the pessimism.
Steve
I think we have to consider this a high point in a big work in progress, where that work is changing the public perception and hopefully that of future legislators. I think all of the “hype” so far has generated a lot more interest than we’ve seen in missions past. NASA needs to seize this moment and parlay the fruits of their efforts so far into that desired improved public image. The media coverage so far is a great start. Having a Facebook account and a Twitter feed are good starts, too. Hopefully this shows that NASA is evolving to make the most of the social and media tools available to them. We’ll see.
Congrats!!
NASA This is what you do best!
Congratulations
Man, JPL seemed to have the powered flight control software dialed in about as perfectly as anyone could expect. I thought heard them say that Curiosity touched down with a downward velocity of 0.6 m/s and a lateral velocity of somewhere in the range of 0.04-0.06 m/s (I was a bit sleepy, so I may be off in my dismembering). Amazing. Hollywood couldn’t come up with a script as good as last night’s story.
NASA TV”s coverage was solid and enjoyable.
The agency and everyone involved should feel very proud. I know I’m proud of ’em.
Nicely put.
“Hollywood couldn’t come up with a script as good as last night’s story.”
Sure they could. Although theirs would have required the “reactor” on the rover to be “jump-started” by firing a proton beam from the LHC, focused through the Hubble, reversing the polarity of the Plutonium Matrix on the rover. (The “reactor” having been sabotaged by a minion/spy/stooge working for wealthy super-villain, Elon Musk, in order to make his company look better to win the Mars Colonisation Program about to be announced by the UN…)
It is said, Generals always fight the last war. It appears that way on here sometimes. While I applaud the successful efforts of JPL and look forward to data returning, what is wrong with extrapolating where that technology can take us next.
If SpaceX is able to learn something from this operation and it furthers America’s space efforts, why is that a bad thing for the Nation and to be condemed?
Folks:
I was lucky enough to have my weekly radio show at the university station during Curiosity’s landing, So, I played an hour of ‘Mars’ music and a replay of Opportunity’s landing to get folks in the mood. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, I’m frantically trying to find a site to stream the audio to my listeners that worked! Finally found a good feed (that one site that didn’t crash?) and started streaming the pre-game show.
So, EDL. I’m giving a little running commentary, things are looking good… landing… and then… chaos! Instead of post landing data, the room explodes into cheers and yelling… for over ten minutes. Not good radio. I knew they might get some images so I let it run. Thought I was safe, being NASA TV and all, Then I hear something the makes a radio announcer’s blood run cold… a well educated scientist or engineer saying “Holy [censored]!”. You may not have noticed but decades of radio have fine tuned my senses to such things.
Oh well, I’ll probably get away with it though, Who’d o’ thought… NASA TV. (shake head, sigh)
tinker
lol, I’m guessing NASA TV does not have live censoring
It was a great achievement, but did anyone else notice a curious lack of diversity in that control room? Where are the African Americans at JPL?
Oh, COME ON! You’re going to raise identity politics in the midst of an engineering triumph? Or would it be better to point out that there were women, Asians, a black NASA Administrator, etc…in the room at JPL? Did it escape you that the flight director at the time is named Chen? Did it escape you that at 14:15 of the video two east Indian men were hugging an Asian woman? NASA is remarkably good about finding minority candidates, but the bottom line in science is this: can you get the job done? Good! It doesn’t matter what color, race, creed or whatever, as long as your numbers are good and you’re competent at your job. And that, I believe, is what King meant when he longed for people to be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.
I’m extremely disappointed to see this sort of comment show up. Why must you go looking for trouble?
Did you notice that the majority of people, by far, in Mission Control had short hair instead of long hair? How can they work under those conditions?
And did you notice that almost everyone in the room was wearing the exact same blue shirt? If that’s not a flagrant social bias I don’t know what is.
Why must you spoil a special moment in history with such a brainless question? It belittles us all.
Steve
I’m the one belittling “us all”?
I’m not the one comparing a glaring lack of black scientists & engineers on that team to “shirt color” and “hair length”.
I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t the only person who noticed that the only African Americans involved in this “special moment in history” were one political appointee from President Obama, and will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas.
You can stomp your feet and call my comment brainless if you want, but JPL is about to have some of their already lean budget diverted to minority recruitment and a long series of diversity PR programs.
Because unlike you, I can count how many African Americans were in the control center at JPL, AND I can count how many members of the Congressional Black Caucus sit on the committees that control the funding for JPL.
Their biggest achievement in years and they rolled out will.i.am.
JPL is about to get spanked.
who would notice such a thing?
are you seriously under the impression that there’s some huge army of African Americans out there with at least all the skill of the MSL team or more that are just being sidelined due to ….. what??? this kind of idjiocy is distracting the entire country from achieving anything but worthless paper work and transfer payments…
Image from HiRISE, brought to you by the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Lab. Bear down.
Pretty awesome. I wonder what Malin Space Science Systems could do with the NRO scopes in storage…
A great achievement in every sense. It was a really complicated EDL sequence, with myriad possibilities for things to go wrong at the last moment, and lose the entire mission. But it went perfectly. Thats a credit to the engineers and scientists who worked out the concept, built the vehicle, tested it, and then managed the flight.
So now the Spacecraft Operations people can get on with a 2 year (plus probable extension) surface mission for Curiosity. Hopefully some good science in coming months.
In the meantime, there should be an added debate as to the US’ next steps in regards to Mars. I’m not sure there is one at the moment! Yet the complexity of getting Curiosity down safely suggests the US should think boldly. Frankly, in terms of unmanned missions, of course I’d like to see a sample return, and more complex rovers, as well as a Mars Plane…maybe more than one. Its time to think about new mission concepts and how we might get more hardware on the surface, than even was the case with Curiosity.
The powered descent followed by the Skyhook seems a complex and perilous option, so why not use what might be called ‘the drop-ship’ approach? Have a larger vehicle designed for atmospheric entry and powered landing which contains more than one rover internally. Design this to supersonic glide towards the landing site, in the same way as Curiosity during EDL, then slow down with chutes, followed by a powered descent right to the surface – no Skyhook. Rovers are then deployed from a drop-down ramp at the back of the vehicle and deploy in multiple directions once the drop ship is on the ground. Its likely the drop ship could not be reused unless we could land it close to a -pre-deployed methane propellant factory on the surface, in which case the drop ship could be designed to relocate to deploy more rovers. Support all these rovers from orbit and coordinate with deployed Mars Planes – small ones like mini-UAVs – which scout the terrain ahead of the rovers.
In terms of getting to Mars, rather than go straight from Earth-Mars transfer trajectory to EDL, have the Mars Transfer Vehicle aerobrake into Mars orbit before releasing the drop ship – or multiple drop ships – for delivery of rovers and or other vehicles to Mars. The orbiting MTV then can do its own science, and support surface operations.
The MTV could be designed to be assembled on-orbit, with the ISS as the construction shack. It would be modular in design, employing Orion and other components, and be designed to be reconfigurable for other missions – around the Moon or to an NEA. So rather than rockets, I’m thinking solar-electric propulsion. Once its mission is finished around Mars, it would be brought back to Earth for refurbishment for the next mission. It does not land on Earth, and remains permanently based in Space, with the ISS as its ‘home-port’. Hopefully it would be the first of several such spacecraft.
Why go to all this sort of complexity? To me its good to practice techniques and develop capabilities that could then be applied to manned missions in the future. Whilst it would not be an exact analogue to a manned Mars mission, it would get us used to large scale missions rather than an individual probe or lander.
But how about cost? Ultimately, if we want to do more than send individual probes, it will cost more, granted. The question we have to ask ourselves is…do we want to do more than send individual probes to Mars? Do we want to do Mars exploration on a larger scale? Do we ultimately want to send humans to work alongside the robots?
Dr. Malcolm R Davis
Bond University, Australia
As someone who grew up in the 80s, I agree mostly because I want my MTV 😉
That HiRISE image is extraordinary.