Odyssey and MER Budgets Cut |
Odyssey and MER Budgets Cut |
Mar 24 2008, 09:11 PM
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#1
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 3 Joined: 12-March 08 Member No.: 4062 |
Just found out today at a MER all-hands meeting that both MER and Odyssey will each be suffering an immediate $4 million budget cut to help defray the cost of MSL. Read more here: http://martianchronicles.wordpress.com/200...rs-budget-cuts/
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Mar 25 2008, 05:14 AM
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#2
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Administrator Group: Admin Posts: 5172 Joined: 4-August 05 From: Pasadena, CA, USA, Earth Member No.: 454 |
Here's a question I don't know the answer to: Say Spirit can no longer rove, but has enough power to continue some observations, in particular observations of weather phenomena like sky opacity and stuff like that. How valuable is it for the understanding of Mars' weather to have one continuous set of measurements from one point on the ground indefinitely? Spirit's not a real "weather station" -- it can't measure wind speed or direction or other properties of the air, at least not directly; but it can continue to gather records relevant to weather. Is having that one limited set of records from that one point worth spending a few to 10 million dollars over the course of a year? Or is the type of data that Spirit can gather so limited that gathering another year or two's worth wouldn't provide much further incremental benefit to Mars climatologists?
Mike, since you're the representative of the orbital community in this discussion, can you comment on what continuing science campaigns are being performed by Odyssey? I don't know much more to say about specifically why Odyssey needs to continue other than "More data good. No more data bad." And I'm sure there are much more intelligent things that can be said than that. --Emily -------------------- My website - My Patreon - @elakdawalla on Twitter - Please support unmannedspaceflight.com by donating here.
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Mar 25 2008, 05:49 AM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
In what is serendipitous timing, a piece on Odyssey science, after appearing in this week's Science, just broke in the big-time press (eg, New York Times).
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/319/5870/1651 |
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