I never really understood why you'd have Perseverance drill the cores and then just leave them on the ground for an underdefined future mission to retrieve.
> would have deemed a real plan as too expensive
Who are these "powers that be"? And do they have an infinite credit card? Could they really just do whatever they want and for some reason they choose not to?
Yes. They decided that it was more valuable spending a trillion dollars bombing people halfway around the world (and enriching weapons companies in the process) than it would be to spend a few billion advancing science.
NASA's budget is $24 billion this year. That's substantially larger than even Trump asked for, which was $16 billion. For reference, the ESA, the entirety of the EU's budget for space exploration and enterprise: $8 billion.
USA has two goddamn robots on Mars. And multiple others orbiting the planet itself. And also a couple that have left our solar system.
The Trump administration wanted to cut NASA's science budget in half, so the final number ($7.25B) is about 1% less than last year's budget. <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-s-mars-sample-return-mission-dead" rel="nofollow">https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-s-mars-sample-r...
The war in Iran costs about $95m a day and is already over $43b cost to the taxpayers, just in military spending. That's nearly two NASA budgets in just over 200 days.
The "powers that be" chose to lose a completely optional and ill-conceived war on your dime. Instead of science or helping people they decided to spend money blowing up schoolgirls.
The entity that has exclusive power over the US federal budget, and thus NASA budget, is called the US Congress. This is a standard arrangement in representative democracies.
Um, NASA doesn't ask anything from the Congress, they get no say. They did not request their budget to be halved. They advise the executive, and then the executive asks the Congress to halve their budget and cancel half the missions because, you know. Luckily, the Congress was not inclined to agree because NASA actually has a solid bipartisan support.
NASA administrator Bill Nelson <a href="https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/04/nasa-says-it-needs-better-ideas-on-how-to-return-samples-from-mars/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/04/nasa-says-it-needs-bet... and then, once somewhater cheaper options had been considered, Congress following Trump administration priorities. <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-s-mars-sample-return-mission-dead" rel="nofollow">https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-s-mars-sample-r...
The reason why NASA ended the Apollo program is because the American public 1) was never as committed to Apollo as younger people seem to believe they were with most people being indifferent to it and plenty of people being outright against it as wasteful, and 2) even the modicum of support it had on the Apollo 11th landing was gone by the next mission. Famously, Apollo 13 was notable for regaining the attention of the public, which it almost certainly would not have had if it weren't for their lives being on the line.
The public has almost never voted for more funding to NASA. The Kennedy Administration put a shitload of money into NASA hands, without real public approval, for geopolitical goals. It was never for public anything. The public just cannot be assed to spend even a few dollars on things they don't like, and they've never cared for generic space science.
The general public can in fact do whatever they can manage to fund, including through enormous debt, which is how we spent like $40 trillion on stupid wars in the desert for no reason. I was never really in agreement with doing that, but for some reason such a suggestion was "Unamerican", as claimed by the very people bitching about the debt right now. Who just so happened to be mostly the same people voting on doing those stupid wars.
It doesn't matter how many games you want to play with how "the system" makes it hard to vote for the right people, or how the incentives are constructed, but even in such a system, the Trump power bloc is still based around voting people out if they get in his way. The power always comes down to voting. The people in our government do all the shenanigans they do because it's how you capture the votes. They pander to giant businesses because those businesses pay for their political ads, which always go up in price so that only the largest businesses can afford to control them. But politicians do it because those ads get them the votes. If just doing their job better got them more votes, they would do that, or be replaced with someone who would.
The powers that be are the voters, with caveats and nuance.
No. The sample is only physically measured and then imaged. <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/jpl/the-extraordinary-sample-gathering-system-of-nasas-perseverance-mars-rover/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/jpl/the-extraord... All further analysis will happen when the sample is returned to earth.
An all-in-one solution would be far too heavy. Splitting the tasks up makes a lot of sense. Having all the equipment onboard to drill cores, quickly analyze them, decide if they're worth keeping, and then putting samples in containers is enough work for one rover.
* Storing all the samples onboard means a larger and heavier rover
* Mass budget squeeze means no more helicopter
* The return requires a ground launch from mars, so no more SkyCrane delivery system
They store the empty tubes, why not the full ones? Are they collecting that much mass that it’s really impractical. Are the empty tubes nested like solo cups to save space? I understand the rationale for the sample return, but those tubes will be hard to find after years of dust storms.
Whoa... TIL the rover had a tissue-box-sized helicopter (!!) on it! (and apparently the rotors must spin several times faster than a helicopter on earth due to Mars's sparse atmosphere). That's incredible.
I feel like SpaceX does an amazing job of producing docos and media (constant professionally-commentated live streams etc) but I never seem to see much from NASA. Sad, really.
There was extreme media coverage of the helicopter, live streams, twitter accounts, and scientists talking every day in media about if they could get another flight out of the copter. It was a huge media moment
The fascinating thing is that it wasn't a primary part of the mission but got lots of excitement. For me it was the thing that it features many off-the shelf parts from smartphones, uses linux and other open source software and it beat the expectations on how long it will service - Planned ~30 days with 5 flights and it did almost 3 years with 72 flights. <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/after-three-years-on-mars-nasas-ingenuity-helicopter-mission-ends/?utm_source=chatgpt.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/after-three-years-on-mars-...
They do store the tubes onboard according to: <a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-perseverance-rover-completes-mars-sample-depot/" rel="nofollow">https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-perseverance-rover-compl...
It says they have two sets of every sample: One onboard and one in the designated drop area.
The drop area is a backup: if the rover dies while travelling somewhere, the return pickup mission would not be in the right spot.
Imnimo · · focus · HN ↗
q_andrew · · focus · HN ↗
petcat · · focus · HN ↗
Who are these "powers that be"? And do they have an infinite credit card? Could they really just do whatever they want and for some reason they choose not to?
q_andrew · · focus · HN ↗
astrange · · focus · HN ↗
psadauskas · · focus · HN ↗
petcat · · focus · HN ↗
USA has two goddamn robots on Mars. And multiple others orbiting the planet itself. And also a couple that have left our solar system.
smallerize · · focus · HN ↗
dmix · · focus · HN ↗
giantrobot · · focus · HN ↗
The "powers that be" chose to lose a completely optional and ill-conceived war on your dime. Instead of science or helping people they decided to spend money blowing up schoolgirls.
Sharlin · · focus · HN ↗
petcat · · focus · HN ↗
Sharlin · · focus · HN ↗
smallerize · · focus · HN ↗
mrguyorama · · focus · HN ↗
The reason why NASA ended the Apollo program is because the American public 1) was never as committed to Apollo as younger people seem to believe they were with most people being indifferent to it and plenty of people being outright against it as wasteful, and 2) even the modicum of support it had on the Apollo 11th landing was gone by the next mission. Famously, Apollo 13 was notable for regaining the attention of the public, which it almost certainly would not have had if it weren't for their lives being on the line.
The public has almost never voted for more funding to NASA. The Kennedy Administration put a shitload of money into NASA hands, without real public approval, for geopolitical goals. It was never for public anything. The public just cannot be assed to spend even a few dollars on things they don't like, and they've never cared for generic space science.
The general public can in fact do whatever they can manage to fund, including through enormous debt, which is how we spent like $40 trillion on stupid wars in the desert for no reason. I was never really in agreement with doing that, but for some reason such a suggestion was "Unamerican", as claimed by the very people bitching about the debt right now. Who just so happened to be mostly the same people voting on doing those stupid wars.
It doesn't matter how many games you want to play with how "the system" makes it hard to vote for the right people, or how the incentives are constructed, but even in such a system, the Trump power bloc is still based around voting people out if they get in his way. The power always comes down to voting. The people in our government do all the shenanigans they do because it's how you capture the votes. They pander to giant businesses because those businesses pay for their political ads, which always go up in price so that only the largest businesses can afford to control them. But politicians do it because those ads get them the votes. If just doing their job better got them more votes, they would do that, or be replaced with someone who would.
The powers that be are the voters, with caveats and nuance.
nomel · · focus · HN ↗
nomel · · focus · HN ↗
Muhammad523 · · focus · HN ↗
smallerize · · focus · HN ↗
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yabones · · focus · HN ↗
* Storing all the samples onboard means a larger and heavier rover
* Mass budget squeeze means no more helicopter
* The return requires a ground launch from mars, so no more SkyCrane delivery system
kphorn · · focus · HN ↗
NetMageSCW · · focus · HN ↗
nomilk · · focus · HN ↗
I feel like SpaceX does an amazing job of producing docos and media (constant professionally-commentated live streams etc) but I never seem to see much from NASA. Sad, really.
hhh · · focus · HN ↗
jve · · focus · HN ↗
GJim · · focus · HN ↗
Wait until you find out that the helicopter carried a small piece of fabric from the wing of the 1903 Wright Flyer.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers#Wright_Brothers_Field" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers#Wright_Brother...
kphorn · · focus · HN ↗
NetMageSCW · · focus · HN ↗
usef- · · focus · HN ↗
It says they have two sets of every sample: One onboard and one in the designated drop area.
The drop area is a backup: if the rover dies while travelling somewhere, the return pickup mission would not be in the right spot.
NetMageSCW · · focus · HN ↗
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