"It was concluded by the MIRT technical/architecture team that Midway is inaccessible as a landing site".

The helicopter was a not-unreasonable bit of redundancy that didn't seem like it was a big cost/mass driver. Losing the helicopter because they insisted on adding an RTG doesn't seem like progress to me. But it's pretty obvious that this whole mission is toast now anyway.

That's what https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads...ated-signed.pdf says, yes. This document also establishes a performance floor of 18 samples, so they just can't return the Three Forks depot. Though they said this in a very wishy-washy fashion.

It's far from clear given the greater context, though, what the heck's going to happen. The industry solicitation ( https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/viewre...SMSR_Amend9.pdf ) is a weird move and only makes sense to me if somebody thinks that SpaceX can just rip up the current architecture entirely and do something based on Starship (which in the near term seems extremely unlikely to me.)

"A proposal may, but is not required to, propose to study a mission design that
incorporates elements of NASA’s MSR Program or NASA’s Artemis Program as
Government Furnished Equipment (GFE)" -- I presume saying anything about Artemis is an opening for SpaceX to propose something based on Starship HLS hardware, otherwise it's just a total non-sequitur.

Oh, and they decided that the SRL had to have an RTG on it for better MAV thermal control, claiming that the cost was about the same and ignoring the fact that there is a severe Pu238 shortage, etc.

First batch of Io images from PJ60 have been posted on missionjuno.

Which ones are you thinking of? Mars EDL and Earth EDL are well-proven at these scales, and the ERO seems pretty straightforward, leaving the MAV as the major new element.

I'm not as pessimistic about the MAV as John is, but it's certainly new and doesn't get as much attention as it deserves.

Surprisingly to me, the program seems to have run aground on issues less fundamental than these.

Sorry, the link I found was a PDF and the original link was a PPT so I missed that it was already discussed. There also seems to be some confusion on the NTRS web site, as I often can't find MAV work with a search on NTRS, only via other search engines. You'd think there would be more recent papers by now, but I haven't found them. Maybe I'm just not using NTRS correctly.

Slide 15 is confusing IMHO by showing the whole vehicle "Notional Qualification Test Article" and then showing what seems to be just the interstage and Stage 2 in the lower right, but it's hard to say for sure. Since the avionics and RCS are in the interstage, perhaps they are using the sounding rocket's upper stage as a mass surrogate for the test. I'd like to believe that Marshall has a justification for proposing this. Previous work has mentioned balloon tests but I'm not going to bother to track those down.

It's unclear to me what the real cost drivers with MSR are, but I maintain that if it's the MAV, they are not yelling that from the rooftops that I can see. It's a bit sad to go through this very long thread and see my optimism wax and wane about whether MSR will ever happen, but I am definitely in a trough at the moment. All we can do is wait from the MIRT report.

With all the maps people have made, you'd think this would be an easier question to answer, but this is where I think it is from the JPL map (which has crappy labeling options BTW). (The little green blob above where I added the "depot" label.)

It's not clear if the rover has to make it back there for MSR, but the farther away we get, the more risk-adverse I suspect people will become.

There are a lot of details about the MAV design as of 2022 in https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/2022000...EEE_R1.pptx.pdf

After this, it seems like they wanted to go to a larger design with more mass margin.

Note the sounding-rocket-based flight test on slide 15.

This has been a common theme of yours over the past many many pages of this thread, but the OIG report doesn't highlight anything about MAV development being a concern (other than a $45M budget increase from a MAV motor contractor, page 22). The mass margin discussion on page 25 is about the ERO and its launch and has nothing to do with the MAV.

You may well be right about potential eventual problems with MAV development, but the program has run into plenty of trouble without that worry!

Then where is it from?

Excellent and available on Prime Video. I seem to have something in my eye...

It's hard to tell since the blog has been so dumbed down.

Doesn't sound like new software to me, but it might be a patch of some kind.

Voyager costs $5-7M per year according to the 2024 NASA budget request https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-fiscal-year-2024-budget-request/
I expect most of that is for labor, not sure how DSN time is accounted for.

Either the article is wrong or your notion was, yes.

I don't find it hard to believe that they have 12 FTEs just at JPL for routine ops for the two spacecraft. They have to manage DSN scheduling, build uplink, process downlink, generate PDS archives, etc. And I presume that there are other people at the instrument institutions involved also, though maybe not full-time.

Talk is cheap, and there are essentially zero details here -- nothing on implementation and not even anything about the specific goals of the mission (how many samples, selected how, etc, etc.)

It's fairly obvious that a simple grab sample that doesn't require a rover could be done more cheaply, especially with less rigor in meeting PP requirements. Not to mention the structural advantages of not having multiple NASA centers, international cooperation, and all the other things that constrain the NASA effort (tiptoeing around rule 1.2 here.)

A little more detail, but not much, as of 2022 in https://spacenews.com/china-aims-to-bring-m...sa-esa-mission/

First batch of images posted on missionjuno.

There's a sequence of a Europa shadow transit near the GRS that we took at faster cadence on the inbound leg, might be amusing to animate.

FWIW, it seems like this only happens when DST is in effect and you have "auto-correct DST" turned on in your board settings.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-tu...altimetry-data/ has some interesting items. Apparently more images will be released tomorrow.

As for whether this was a success -- I'm reminded of one of my favorite quotes about the Scott expedition:

It might still be garbage (probably is), but DSS-63 Madrid is receiving at 40 bps from Voyager 1 right now.

FWIW, DSS-56 Madrid is receiving data at 50 kbps from Lunar Node 1 right now.

No, you are seeing the remaining part of one of the lower blades. The solar panel is undamaged and undisturbed.

I think the detached blade is consistent with being the whole half of the upper blade, broken at or near the root.

Much clearer image at https://www.flickr.com/photos/semeion/53549974562/

Those marks look unrelated to me. The simplest explanation is that the heli flew into the ground at an angle ("CFIT") and broke the blades, but the landing gear stance was large enough and the CG low enough that the usual tipover was avoided and it stayed upright while the rotors spun down. There's no need to invoke more complex gymnastics IMHO.

Old news, the missing rotor is off to the left: https://twitter.com/stim3on/status/17545634...h9-LBw&s=08

Storage is not as plentiful as you might think on the JPL campus. It could easily be in some off-site storage where no one can find it (think the last scene of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK) and probably non-functional if it could be found.

From https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/1988006...5_Optimized.pdf



You want to bet on the chances of an Interdata computer from 1975 still being in working order? I did find emulator support for the Interdata and data files for the Interdata operating system, but finding and reading the unique Voyager software on old tapes if they still exist might be a challenge. Even if anyone knows how those tools work any more.

It is a little surprising that they didn't plan ahead for this a bit better, but it's understandable.

Pathfinder wasn't a rover, do you mean Sojourner?

It's possible that they still have a working flight-like Sojourner, maybe. But the last time I saw it in person actually driving was nearly 20 years ago now.

Nice post, but I feel compelled to nit-pick a little, sorry.


They had all of that for Voyager, they just don't have it today, probably because the hardware died and couldn't be repaired. Missions I've worked on (MGS for example) have been severely challenged late in the mission to keep those resources going. The situation has been improving, but I wouldn't call it "solved". And it is rarely if ever a "perfect duplicate" -- on MGS our MOC ground hardware was a bare circuit board mounted to a big sheet of plywood. The spacecraft simulator is usually what's called a "flatsat" -- a collection of boards on tables or in racks, hardly a complete spacecraft.

And good luck finding any of that Pathfinder hardware even today, much less in the near future of "The Martian". All of that stuff was likely scrapped shortly after the mission ended.

I wouldn't count the team out, but not being able to get any useful debugging telemetry back makes it much harder to diagnose than the last problem. And it's not clear they have the resources it would take to either recreate the problem on the ground or start over with a new FDS software image.