Odyssey and MER Budgets Cut Options

[Astro0]

This has hit the wider media already...
http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2008/03/24/bu...ct-mars-rovers/
http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2008/03/24/mars-rover-reprieve/
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/03/24/n...over/index.html


Astro0

[Aussie]

I am not sure that outrage is warranted. My understanding is that despite requesting a budgetary increase overall, the NASA budget request for Mars for the period of 2009-2012 was around $340m, well down from the $620m in last years forward estimates. So the reduction in MER funding is not a Government imposed restriction, but rather is exactly what NASA requested. So now NASA has to work within this self imposed budget. I am not sure what other Mars programs should be diluted to keep the MER funding up to the required level. Nor does it seem smart to call for diversion of funds from other programs. After all in only a few years the shuttle will be retired and the US will lose the capability to launch people into space until Ares 1 comes on line.

Sigh. Perhaps the end run for Von Braun was the way to go for Spirit.

[Greg Hullender]

Well, I wrote my congressman, BUT it already looks like both rovers are safe. So I suggested he introduce a resolution celebrating the Rover's accomplishments and commending the Rover team for promptly sharing their data with the public. Heck, I think that's WAY overdue.

--Greg

[nprev]

Well, I wrote my congressman, BUT it already looks like both rovers are safe.

Huh? Greg, could you please expound on that a bit? Any info you can share here would ease a lot of minds.

[mchan]

Click on Astro's link to CNN above.

[nprev]

Ah...thanks, mchan.

"Mixed signals"...yeah, I'd say so. Hopeful, apparently...I guess...I suppose...argh?!?! "Confusing" is another way to put it.

Can't tell where the nuts and bolts of the situation end and the spin control begins.

[laurele]

Truer words were never spoken. Gotta quote Doug as well, though: "Not like this. Please not like this."

...till they fall off!!!!!!!

The rovers in so many ways represent the best of what the US has to offer--leadership in exploration, willingness to take risks in exploring new frontiers for the sake of knowledge, an incentive for young people and those of all ages to once again become excited about the space program. It would be a crying shame to end a program that has been so successful and so inspirational in a day and age when cynicism too often trumps idealism.

If developments call for these cuts to go forward, there should be an organized effort to get them reversed, through letters from people on sites like this as well as astronomy clubs, schools, etc. It's just my opinion, but some members of Congress may not be that familiar with the rovers' mission and history and may be willing to take a second look at reinstating the funding once they are familiarized with their amazing accomplishments.

[ElkGroveDan]

That said, does anyone think much more good science is going to be coming out of Spirit?

Yes.

[JRehling]

That said, does anyone think much more good science is going to be coming out of Spirit?

There's definitely a spectrum along which missions fall according to how much more science a working craft can provide once it's done the once-over. Magellan obviously could have provided SOME science from additional radar mapping, but it was also obviously a diminishing return. Or a hail mary effort to dubious ends (like looking for mass movement).

In principle, Spirit could do a number of things, over an arbitrarily long period of time, for scientific gain. We don't know how much more distance it can traverse without failing. It could perhaps do some things outside the expected, like survey thoroughly for meteorites, or set off on a quixotic drive towards some [very] far-off landmark on the off chance that it would survive the trek. Perhaps even a return to Bonneville on the off-chance that some layering exists that couldn't be seen from the perspectives gained early in the mission.

This is, of course, all in the diminishing returns department. It's hard to say how much the science/dollar is, but then, that's hard to say with a newly minted mission as well.

[mcaplinger]

I would argue that Odyssey is far more likely to yield more good science than either of the rovers, which will be lucky to go a few more km and which have pretty much already exhausted the capabilities of their payloads to find anything more out about the landing sites (barring some unpredictable serendipitous discovery.)

But, as usual, the orbiter missions are "boring" and the rovers aren't. Though this budget business is the only rover news I can remember getting any media attention for quite a while (years?)

[slinted]

That said, does anyone think much more good science is going to be coming out of Spirit?

Since the story came out today, I've been thinking about which activities Spirit would lose by going into hibernation now. Here's a short list of what would be lost from Pancam alone:

Tau profiles: Both rovers have a very data-dense profile going back 1500 sols with new values being recorded nearly every sol. Hibernating until October would mean losing ~200 sols worth of data, and by doing so Spirit may miss the first signs of dust activity coming out of winter (depending on when in October they wake Spirit back up).

Full-filter 360 stereo panorama: The McMurdo panorama, taken last winter by Spirit, was THE most detailed/lossless imaging campaign from a single location for either rover. This year's Bonestell panorama would be similar and has already begun, but we'll lose that if Spirit goes into hibernation now.

Long term monitoring: Including the El Dorado monitoring campaign (which showed some dramatic changes last winter) and some of the horizon/sky sequences

I'm missing many other possible activities, but even on the strength of these scientific opportunities alone, they should find $4 million dollars to keep a great project alive.

[elakdawalla]

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

[JRehling]

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

[edstrick]

"... Magellan obviously could have provided SOME science from additional radar mapping,..."

False.

Magellan's radar had FAILED. An electronics problem that changed from occassional-intermittent to constant (as I recall) wiped out Magellan's ability to do imaging. (It put the radar equivalent of a microphone-feedback-squeel in the transmitter or receiver or something). Magellan had aerobraked (in an engineering demonstration that paved the way for all subsequent Mars orbiters) into a low near-circular orbit and raised periapsis. From that orbit, radio tracking of the spacecraft provided a pole-to-pole uniform quality gravity anomaly map not possible from it's original orbit. The spacecraft was finally de-orbited in a series aerobraking dynamics tests as it's solar panels were failing and the spacecraft was about to go "power negative", due to solder joint failing in the solar panels caused by 8 venus years of thermal cycling, sped-up in the low circular orbit.

[edstrick]

"...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...."

What is the status of the MiniTES?... I thought that was essentially inoperative (unable to return useful science) on both landers due to dust contamination. But, I've seen that it's doing some routine observations on Spirit.

The rovers can (with MiniTES, if it's working) get thermal profiles of the lower atmosphere and see convective turbulence due to daytime heating, etc. They can also monitor atmospheric opacity, sky color and brightness, and clouds. The problem is how much this is worth compared with other science. There ought to be Viking-2 Winter and Viking-1 "Eternal Mission" type modes of repetitive cycle, fully automatic operation: Collect data for a week, dump it in a single communications session, whether anybody's listening or not. Should be.....

Slinted's comments and list of suggestions a few posts back are very much the sort of thing that can be automated. VL-1 did that sort of thing, a few targets re-imaged at intervals, a s....l....o....w....l....y built up panorama, etc. (note that the viking landers were extremely data volume limited on a direct link to Earth, much as the Rovers are now.