NASA Panel Finds Fault WIth Curiosity Rover Project's Focus 51
The Curiosity Rover that's been exploring the surface of Mars for more than two years now has a lot of fans (and quite a few headlines here on Slashdot), but not everyone feels positively toward the project. Tech Times reports that NASA revealed on Wednesday that it has renewed the funding of seven ongoing planetary exploration missions but of these, the space agency's Planetary Mission Senior Review panel, which reviewed and rated these planetary missions, was particularly critical of the Curiosity, which also happens to be the newest and the second costliest of the seven missions. The panel is disappointed that given the capabilities of the Curiosity rover, the team behind it only intends to take and analyze eight samples in two years, which translates to two samples from each of the four units it will visit during its extended mission. The Curiosity is the only NASA tool with the capabilities to detect carbon, do in situ age analysis, and measure ionizing particle flux.
Focus (Score:5, Funny)
NASA Panel Finds Fault WIth Curiosity Rover Project's Focus
This happened with Hubble too.
Re:Focus (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course. A review panel that can't find a fault gets disbanded, because they obviously aren't performing their function properly.
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Lets set up a review panel to review review panel reviews!
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Lets set up a review panel to review review panel reviews!
I think that's how Congress works.
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and then they complain that too much tax money is spent on panel review panels.
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That should be reviewed.
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we will put it under consideration to review your request to put it under review
We're reviewing whether we should review considering a review of your request to put it under review.
Oh, we're gonna vote ourselves a raise though, no need to review that.
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no, because only Congressmen sit on the 'review of review panel reviews' panel
Re: Focus (Score:3)
And the 2012 Ignobel literature prize went to: LITERATURE PRIZE: The US Government General Accountability Office, for issuing a report about reports about reports that recommends the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports.
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Yo, Dawg ... I hear you like review panels ...
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Whoosh!
http://www.spacetelescope.org/... [spacetelescope.org]
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MOOOOOOM!!! The curiosity team won't share their awesome rover with me!!!!
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To Dwell or Not To Dwell (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought they haven't arrived at the primary target yet. Sampling secondary targets slows down progress toward the primary target.
I can see rationale for "not dwelling" at secondary targets. If these secondary targets are somehow deemed primary or prime targets (not stated), that's a different matter, but doing so detracts from the original primary target.
It seems somebody is using "bean counter" logic whereby you judge quantity instead of quality.
Re:To Dwell or Not To Dwell (Score:5, Interesting)
By the way, here's a somewhat more detailed article:
http://spaceflightnow.com/news... [spaceflightnow.com]
It seems the complaining panel may be trying to "force science" when it's really an exploration or survey mission. Example:
You don't "prove hypotheses", you collect evidence first. If you find something really interesting, then either spend more time at that place, or drive back to it if oddities are found after-the-fact and are big enough to justify it.
It seems they are asking for premature regimentation. You have to react to circumstances. Essentially, its mission plan should be "drive around and sniff at interesting or odd things".
Re:To Dwell or Not To Dwell (Score:5, Funny)
It's a 3-trillion-dollar dog!
Not just any dog through, it's a space-dog. And it has lasers, that has to count for something, too.
NASA bureaucracy at it again (Score:1)
Curiosity has spent two years on Mars taking samples and making surface measurements -- and guess what? It's nowhere near completing its actual primary science goal: getting to Mt. Sharp. The geologists are, pun completely intended, running this mission into the ground.
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Part of the problem is that particular area of Mars is rough on the rover's wheels (different than seen by other probes), so they have to be more cautious than expected.
Re:NASA bureaucracy at it again (Score:5, Informative)
For those who don't follow this stuff: the rover has tin-foil wheels, and they're getting chewed up fast (many holes and tears in them already). The problem is sharp rocks that are embedded firmly in the ground, or perhaps part of the bedrock like a'a lava - a geological feature that wasn't expected or designed for. The rover can handle sharp rocks in soil just fine, but now they're going really slowly trying to find a better path.
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Tin foil wheels? Did they ever, I dunno, make one and test it?
I wonder what the design spec was like. "Make a wheel out of some of the flimsiest stuff possible and make it travel over extremely aggressive terrain in an extreme environment" Sounds like a great plan. At least they didn't choose tissue paper -THAT might have been worse.
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As with anything on Slashdot that starts with armchair experts asking "didn't they think of X?", well, of course they thought of X. Weight of the probe is the primary cost of the mission - nothing's heavier than in must be.
These wheels were tested extensively, and work just fine in normal rocky soil - they're more robust than car tires. But glue a spike to the ground pointing up and it goes right through the wheel. There was no reason to expect Martian Caltrops, but that's what was found: sharp spikes of
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I've seen this kind of argument here on slashdot since Curiosity landed. Talking about the weight of wheels is a misdirection. This is about weight, but the crux of this issue is about priorities: choosing to load up the rover with more scientific instruments instead of making the rover more durable. In effect, the committee that designed Curiosity chose to subvert the primary mission (traveling to Mt. Sharp) before was even built by choosing short-term scientific goals over a long-term exploration ability.
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Well, to the engineers' defense, the wheels were designed to handle the terrain that was found by the previous 2 rovers. Going beyond that probably gets into internal NASA politics, but your claim wouldn't surprise me at all - sexy features seem to trump infrastructure in every field.
Follow the Money (Score:1)
So which multinational conglomerate is making the over priced pork barrel replacement?
no multi conglomerates (Score:1)
Just a bunch of techs, engineers, and scientists at JPL, which is part of CalTech, and a few dozen instruments and stuff from other universities.
eunuchs (Score:2)
the team behind it only intends to take and analyze eight samples in two years, which translates to two samples from each of the four units it will visit during its extended mission.
editing fail; I think they met eunuchs. maybe there aren't as many eunuchs on mars as NASA first expected.
Re:NASA Wasting Time and Money (Score:5, Informative)
Let's face facts that NASA is wasting a lot of earth's resources for little in exchange, considering that the earth is quickly using up valuable energy that is in the non-renewable form. With all of NASA's s scientific and technical savvy, they could be working on much more effective projects that would benefit Planet Earth's burdoned and disappearing resources.
Right you are. A governmental department that spends three quarters of one percent [wikipedia.org] of the US Federal budget is 'wasting a lot of earth's resources". Sorry guy, go whine at the Department of Defense, the Homeland Security Department or the Bureau of Land Mismanagement if you want to chip away at wasted resources.
And, in point of fact, NASA does spend a lot of it's money on earth observation. Of all of those nifty satellites that catalog said resources, most of them come from NASA.
Go tilt at some other windmill.
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Money is not the only resource. Start again, please.
Managers (Score:5, Interesting)
explorers vs accountants (Score:5, Interesting)
dorks don't want anyone else to play with their expensive toys...that's one way to look at this...
NASA is awesome...because they are the institution that goes to space...their **task** is awesome
**execution** has always been an area for improvement...NASA can be awesome and still have major problems!!!
it comes down to bean counters vs explorers...aka ***risk analysis***
the prototypical example of this is the Mercury astronauts and their crusade to include the human in the mission
the old saying goes "paralysis by analysis"
however you contextualize the problem, the root cause is faulty risk assessment...the entire notion of risk assessment in project management has become a clusterfuck of cause/effect errors & voodoo quantification of non-quant factors
NASA isn't alone in this, of course...**every beauracracy** tends to have these problems...
i'm not anti-NASA...I'm pro human spaceflight and human space exploration...i love these rovers too...let's put them to work and not be afraid to break them!
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Indeed!
It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low
Re:Easy Fix (Score:4, Funny)
Tie their pay to productivity and provide bonuses to exceeding explicit, ambitious goals.
... to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.
Good idea. Maybe we could make a reality TV show about that.
The problem is its focus is SCARED. (Score:2, Interesting)
The biggest problem the scientific community has had is that the Rover does only science that has been done all before; It could easily be detecting life or past life or dead life from a thousand years ago.. but they refuse to do that sort of science even when they have outfitted the rover with the tools to do it, due in part to various political factions putting pressure on them NOT to do the science; Science is literately being censored and hats the most terrible thing.
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Are you saying they are scared to detect life? That's a rather odd claim I hope would come with more evidence. And Curiosity is not designed to directly detect life anyhow. Even if they find life-like signs, most likely it would require a follow-up mission(s) to verify it really is life. Thus deflecting the life issue is built into the mission already by not having that ability to begin with.
A more fitting question may be why we haven't sent a direct life-detecting mission since the mid 1970's. But that's
Mis-read the title (Score:2, Funny)
Thought it was about projector focus.
Never mind.
Internal NASA bickering (Score:3)
Curiosity is an exception.... (Score:3)