wait for a privately sponsored mission to bring the samples back...

"Down to" and "up" don't apply with Phobos. The escape velocity is 40 km/hour. That's a nudge, not a launch.

Thinking (probably unhelpfully, brainstorming) outside the box, maybe a good place to store the samples would be ON Phobos. We won't lose that.

I read this section as the review committee making a recommendation on the minimum mass and diversity of the collected samples that would make the expense worth it.

Agreed, they can't possibly mean that. If the OS has to have a long-lived beacon, then it becomes a small spacecraft and things will snowball.

A small canister in orbit could easily be lost to tracking...

The fact that there's no overall PI for the project, like on a normal flagship mission, also struck me (not counting Perseverance, which does have one).

A Planetary Society interview with the head of the independent review board. Some very interesting details.

The terminal tracking system seems to be more than capable of dealing with 'distractions'

The original trajectory would have flown through the radiation belts much more often.

It will be exciting if the terminal tracking system pans out as expected.

The de-spinning mirror of JIRAM is sticking!? When did this happen?

The bigger concern is that CAPS will do what the Decadal did and think, well, IVO was successful in Discovery so why does it need to be a NF mission...

Two missions on the NF-5 list of mission themes do not appear on the above lists for NF-6 and NF-7:
Io Observer and SPA sample return. The committee carefully considered the Io Observer NF theme in light
of the success of the IVO Discovery mission in reaching Phase A. In their 2020 report 19 , CAPS stated “If
NASA’s exploration of Io proceeds via the selection of the IVO Discovery mission, then based on the IVO
Step 1 proposal, inclusion of Io Observer would be redundant scientifically and its inclusion in NF5 would
strongly warrant reconsideration.” The committee reaffirms the importance of Io as unique body. Not only
is it important to understanding tidal dissipation and resulting active volcanic, tectonic, and plasma
processes, but also, for example, to providing an important analog to young terrestrial planets and tidally
heated exoplanets. The committee anticipates that Io Observer will have an opportunity to compete in NF-
5. The selection of IVO for Phase A study demonstrates that fundamental Io science can also be achieved
via the Discovery program, and this may be increasingly true with time as power systems and launch
vehicles continue to evolve. These factors placed this theme at lower priority for NF-6 and NF-7 than other
themes that clearly require a medium-class mission to complete their core science.

Different Moon rover paths.

I'm guessing compression artifacts are the cause of the weird appearance of the early Chandrayaan 3 imagery.

ISRO has released the full landing video.

Also, I do not have access to enough information about the forum to determine whether or not they are overpaying.

Is there any update to this effort to digitize the Surveyor imagery?

We badly need a more modern, functional, accessible and sustainable platform...[/color]

It looks like it has some dirt - not just dust - on its solar panel.