Could Curiosity Rover Moonlight As Part of a Sample Return Mission? 65
pigrabbitbear writes "After recent budget cuts to NASA's Mars program, the agency's dream of a sample return mission within the next decade is dead in the water. But the $2.5 billion rover Curiosity is on its way to the red planet right now, and speculation is popping up online that it could fairly easily be retrofitted with the hardware needed to collect and store samples. Theoretically NASA would just need one more mission to collect and return those samples, turning Curiosity into the first phase of the sample return dream."
Pathetic (Score:4, Funny)
I know a mission to bring back samples from Mars would be a true engineering challenge, and I know sending people on Mars and back would be fantastically expensive for almost no appreciable scientific return, and I know the cold war is over. Yet...
"The agency's dream of a sample return mission within the next decade". Sheesh. That's what NASA dreams of doing within a friggin' decade now? No wonder nobody in the US is excited by space exploration anymore.