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NASA Announces Next Mars Mission
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Sep 15, 2008 09:07 PM
from the next-planet-from-the-sun dept.
from the next-planet-from-the-sun dept.
Grant Henninger writes "Today, NASA announced their final selection for the Mars Scout 2013 mission: Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN. MAVEN will provide the first direct measurements ever taken to address key scientific questions about Mars's evolution by measuring characteristics of its atmospheric gases, upper atmosphere, solar wind, and ionosphere. The mission, estimated to cost $485M, is scheduled for launch in late 2013."
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Let me be the first to say... (Score:5, Funny)
Hoyven MAVEN!
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, what a boring science mission.
I say we attack them instead and keep the planet for ourselves.
That's what these missions are ultimately for (Score:2, Funny)
That means, How difficult is it to land troops?
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Condos? Frig that, I just want a place to get away from it all.
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Wow, what a boring science mission.
At least they don't need a camera. No more fuzzy b/w images for us to worry about.
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but are they looking for oil?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
They are looking for water, which - when the oil runs out - is going to be a lot more interesting.
Note: the vast majority of all fresh water processing is fueled by fossile fuel today (think sea water processing), so when the oil runs out, there is going to be a serious shortage in drinking water.
I't wont even be the first war about water, but it may be the last one. Ever.
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When that happens, there are a few choices.
One, move to far enough north. Then you'll freeze during winter 'cos you don't have oil for heating, but at least you won't go thirsty, and the cold winter will thin out the riff-raff yearly (especially after the global warming triggers the next ice age).
Two, move to south. At least you don't freeze to death without energy, but you'll have to fight for clean drinking water.
Three, pop a few plasmids, grow wings, and then migrate with the birds.
measurement (Score:5, Funny)
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In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
In other news NASA has just issued a press release stating that the proposed $485M mission is already over budget.
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> I actually cannot believe how inexpensive NASA's missions are. It costs just $485M to go to Mars, and how many billions or trillions of dollars to invade Iraq?
This is true: but look at the Return on Investment: ...
- Mars Mission: a few grainy photos and some scientific knowledge - value to gvnt supporters: minimal
- Invade Iraq: a guaranteed flow of a zillion hogsheads of oil - value to gvnt supporters:
What about digging too? (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, I may not know much about space exploration, although I find the topic fun and interesting, but as they are planning this mission, which in effect is the studying of Mars atmosphere and weather, why not kill 2 birds with 1 stone and study Mars' crust or at least, something more like a few hundred feet into the ground itself?
Whatever equipment they send, have a missile or something that can impact or dig into the soil, be launched from space directly onto Mars soil. The resulting hole that would be from could receive the visit from a drone, who could take samples and make various analyses. After all, the surface soil samples they've been doing, it's all nice and dandy, but the real story, I believe should be what's underneath it all.
That way, they get data from the air and they get a sample of what Mars is made of down below. We may end up finding more resources available to help with towards a real man space exploration, as there may be resources awaiting to be utilized.
Depending on cost, etc.., they may even be able to have key locations targetted for drilling and just have a drone in each location dropped.
Gives a better perspective, might see some variations in what is found, depending on location..
Re:What about digging too? (Score:5, Funny)
The Brits did something like that a few years ago...impromptu mission to study Mars surface via high energy impact. Beagle 2 was the name of the impact device.
Parent
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Even better! All we need to do then is scope out Beagle 2's crash site and analyse the soil around it which should still be considered 'freshly' dug up. No need to fire any missiles.
(thinks)
It probably burned up the atmosphere, didn't it?
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Atmosphere? Mars?
I'm not sure it has enough to burn something up...
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The basic process by which the mission is designed starts by defining the scientific scope, i.e. primary, secondary, etc. mission objectives. Based on those, you see which instruments and support devices you need to achieve each mission, and optimize the design to get the most of your objectives done within cost and reducing complexity. The reduction of complexity is important, because a project with a less than double the cost and double the "stuff" is not necessarily better because it probably has a hig
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Actually an impact analyzer has been proposed [asu.edu]. In addition to doing some pretty nifty stratigraphic science, you gotta admit, kinetic strikes from orbit is freakin' cool. :-)
Full disclosure: Phil Christensen is my boss.
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'A few hundred feet' is highly optimistic, I suspect. And if you get to that depth with a missile, there's not much chance of soil from that depth getting to the surface (and even less that the original depth of the debris can be identified). Percussive science has its uses, but this isn't it.
To get soil samples from deeper than a few meters, you need a drilling rig that's larger than can be launched by current rockets.
Re:What about digging too? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, an impact doesn't get you very far. Even the best bunker-buster bombs do only 20 feet of reinforced concrete, not sure how far they'd get in Mars soil but probably not that much further if it's mountains and they're not designed to expel things to the surface. Oh yeah and it'd weigh 4-5000 pounds. As you'd have to wait for a drone to get nearby (we're not that accurate and the drones not that fast) you'll probably get as much out of studying "new" meteor craters, if you only have a brush to take away any residue collected on the surface.
What would be interesting is a drilling operation, but getting a drilling rig that could reach any real depths down there wouldn't exactly be an add-on task. One thing is the drill itself but in general a drilling rig requires some sort of cooling fluid and large amounts of power, both are very rare on Mars. The Rovers actually consume very little power, I don't remember the figure but it's not much. Just making a solar panel farm to power any sort of drilling would probably be an entire mission all by itself.
However, just like oil companies we wouldn't want to drill where there's nothing interesting, so the real answer is probably reflection seismology [wikipedia.org]. Drop a bunch of cheap redundant geophones, make the impact, record all the seismic data through some local wireless grid and send it to a C&C central that'll broadcast it back to earth. It shouldn't be that hard to make a "Mars Glider" instead of lander that'll drop the sensors and the impact can be pretty much anything. If it takes out some of the geophones that's acceptable too.
Parent
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Yeah, and look at financial institutions. They failed because they were all run by the U.S. government, right?
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It was a 1% for 1 year [federalreserve.gov]. That's about 6 years...
The problem is lack of regulation. Let the "free market" do whatever it wants and people will fuck it up. It could be malice or it could be incompetence, either way, oversight is needed.
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Ok, ok, granted, I exaggerated to make a point, 1% was as low as it got, but nevertheless, it was unrealistically low. And as they racked up the interest back up they shouldn't be surprised when people started defaulting on their loans.
If you want more of regulation, then you want more of this. Markets work to direct investment where it is needed pretty damn well, but if you have a central bank that keeps fiddling with the damn interest rates like a PS3 joystick, it is very unfair to point your finger at
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So many assertions, all based on people's political philosophy and not on data!
I find the "oversight over the free market" comment more hilarious, though. Always the desire for some higher power, be it your parents, government, or God to come and save the day. If you have a government overseeing everything then you just have one big possible point of failure as opposed to just smaller points of failure.
Look, I know you're probably young, idealistic, and ready to march to the polls ready to vote for Barack
Re:What about digging too? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have a government overseeing everything then you just have one big possible point of failure as opposed to just smaller points of failure.
Care to elaborate how the Credit Crisis is a "small point of failure"?
but massive government oversight of peoples' lives and dealings, whether they be business or personal (not like the distinction is meaningful or real) is ever really a just or good idea.
Yeah, because giving a democracy the power to do something as radical as keep a stable currency is such a huge intrusion. We should all be scribbling our own IOU's to pay for things. Works much better./sarcasm
Parent
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So many assertions, all based on people's political philosophy and not on data!
So you follow that by spewing your own political philosophy without data as universal truth? The funny thing is the post you replied to was talking about data.
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If only a politician were here to show me the light.
A challange to NASA (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A challange to NASA - OBLIG (Score:5, Funny)
MAVEN - the toilet paper!
MAVEN - the action figure!
MAVEN - the breakfast cereal!
MAVEN - the flame thrower! (the kids love this one)
Parent
Re:A challange to NASA (Score:5, Interesting)
Have us engineering students, engineers and insane rocket enthusiasts/investors design a mission to mars using live animals to test as many technologies as possible before you even think of sending a human mission. We US engineers are either bored building endless varieties of consumer crap or worrying what are we will be asked to build in a war with Russia and Iran. I vote C, a moused mission to mars. Think of the merchandising!
Actually, the Mars Gravity Biosatellite [marsgravity.org], a collaboration between MIT and Georgia Tech, is working on something analogous to what you describe. They aren't planning on actually sending it to Mars though, just Earth orbit:
The Mars Gravity Biosatellite will carry a small population of mice to low Earth orbit aboard a spinning spacecraft creating "artificial gravity" equivalent to that on the Martian surface. The five-week mission will conduct the first in-depth study of how mammals adapt to a reduced-gravity environment. Groundbreaking data from this mission and its successors will be essential in determining future possibilities for human space exploration.
Parent
Sometimes it seems... (Score:3)
...that a good 10% of scientific work goes into inventing catchy acronyms :o) My boss is particularly good at this. And he has to, in order to secure the maximum amount of funding for our research. The catchier the better.
Re:Sometimes it seems... (Score:5, Funny)
Catchy Acronyms That Can Help Increase Economic Resources.
Yeah, I'm bored, and have spent too much time playing !acro on IRC.
Parent
Where's the Kaboom? (Score:5, Funny)
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that is pre-LHC thinking ... nowadays it is not a kaboom. instead, you have quiet sucking sound as the micro black hole swallows the earth.
NASA official units of measurement (Score:2, Insightful)
FTFA:
the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter [...] camera can show Martian landscape features as small as a kitchen table
Exactly how big is a kitchen table? Is it an official unit of measurement? While we're at it, how long is a piece of string?
No wonder the original Polar Lander crashed...
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Avid /. readers will know to immediately convert the area in kitchen tables (Kt) to Cities of Bristol (Cb) [slashdot.org].
1 Kt = 2.026e-8 Cb
Of course, NASA should take pains not to confuse Kt (area) and kt (speed).
I'm going to Mars in 2013 (Score:2)
Quato says... (Score:2)
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Lori: JOETHEAPPLEGUY, are you all right?
[nods]
Lori: You were dreaming. JOETHEAPPLEGUY? Was it about Mars?
[nods]
Lori: [kisses him] Is that better?
JOETHEAPPLEGUY: Hmm.
Lori: My poor baby. This is getting to be an obsession
Professor Frink? (Score:3, Insightful)
Did they let professor Frink name this one?
"Now I'd like to announce Nasa's new Mars spacecraft, the HOYVIN-Maven"
Re:Maven? Really? (Score:4, Informative)
Hmm... MAVEN? Does that mean anything? People who write acronyms contain so much fail.
maven â"noun
an expert or connoisseur.
Parent
Re:Maven? Really? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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People who write acronyms contain so much fail.
Mais Oui, especially when they appeaR to be Overtly creating the Name to fit the acronymS.
Sorry... (Score:2)
Checking the system for measurements would put the cost at $486 million, and therefore they can't afford it.
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Let's be really generous here and say you have the greenest car on earth and can get 50mpg at 70mph. That's 5 gallons of fuel, or 22 litres. That's already a respectable size for a suitcase. So if the most efficient car around running on hydrocarbon fuel can only just achieve your specifications, batteries haven't a