Lockheed Gets $485M From NASA To Create MAVEN Craft 94
coondoggie writes to tell us that Lockheed Martin has landed a $485 million contract to create the spacecraft for NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) project. "MAVEN is the second mission in NASA's Mars Scout Program — a series of small, low-cost, principal investigator-led missions to the Red Planet, NASA said. The Phoenix Mars Lander was the first mission under the program. Lockheed Martin is the industry partner on the Phoenix mission. It designed and built the spacecraft, and also provided flight operations and currently surface operations for the lander. The mission has been extended through Sept. 30, 2008."
MAVEN not MAVAN (Score:5, Informative)
It's MAVEN (In the article), not MAVAN (which is in the title)
Re:It's time to defund NASA (Score:4, Informative)
It's not very clear to me that we learned a lot about manned missions since 1969.
Telescopes, rovers, and orbiters have yielded good knowledge. No?
Orion *is* a big Apollo lander. I recall that it will be capable of landing 3 man on the surface (a 50% increase!). If you were looking for an alternative type of lander, maybe its possible that they got it right in the 60s. On Earth, we the vehicles that are capable of landing include have helicopters and airplanes and not much else. And these don't seen like good ideas to me. Maybe this [moller.com]? The big improvement, though, is Ares V [wikipedia.org] which should enable us to do a big more than just flying to the Moon or Mars and back. With the materials that we'll be able to bring things will get real exciting (you just wait).