Odyssey and MER Budgets Cut Options

[Ryan]

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/

[elakdawalla]

"in this discussion," Mike, "in this discussion." Most people hanging out on UMSF are more than a little emotionally connected to the MERs and have less situational awareness of what's going on with the orbiters -- I figured, since you'd spoken up on Odyssey's behalf, you'd have more to say about what it's currently doing. I've been wondering about the value of long-term THEMIS atmospheric monitoring. Obviously MRO has MCS to do weather monitoring, but the MCS guys haven't yet delivered higher-level data products, and I'll bet having the THEMIS data set overlapping with them will help a lot -- especially since the elevation actuator problem on MCS has severely limited their ability to do nadir-pointing measurements.

To show you how much I (don't) know, I was under the mistaken impression that GRS was no longer taking data. That's one case where "more data good" is a pretty clear-cut benefit, for the reasons you mention.

--Emily

[mcaplinger]

I was under the mistaken impression that GRS was no longer taking data.

Don't get me wrong, it may not be. I'm only involved with Odyssey to the extent that I get consulted when there's a hiccup with the THEMIS hardware, which hasn't happened for a while now.

EDIT: GRS is still releasing products to the PDS (last was in Jan 08). Could you be thinking of MARIE, which has been shut down for a while now?

[Of counsel]

Breaking news?

NASA: Mars rovers won't be cut
1 hour, 19 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES - NASA says it has absolutely no plan to turn off either of the Mars Rovers because of budget cuts. NASA is saying Tuesday that it has rescinded a letter that recommended budget cuts in the Mars Rover program to cover the cost of a next-generation rover on the Red Planet....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080325/ap_on_...HKf8Jxo8IZxieAA
No news source cited. Please excuse me if this was already posted--I haven't seen it yet.

[PaulM]

I read an interview with Steve Squyres (it might have been one of Doug's interviews) in which Steve was asked if a stationary rover would continue to be funded. From what I remember what Steve said was that there would be no problem funding the management of a stationary rover. What could be done is that the number of rover teams could be reduced from two to one and the stationary rover could be managed as a part time activity by the one remaining rover team. What Steve said however was that if both rovers were stationary then it might be difficult to find the money given the limited scientific return from two stationary rovers.

I think that Spirit will be unlikely to do more than 2 days serious science each week for the next year. The remaining 5 days will have to be dedicated to recharging the Solar cells. It seems reasonable to me that the Oppy rover team manage Spirit as a part time job?

I wondered if some of the routine scientific analysis of Spirit and Oppy data could be out-sourced to India or China? I suspect that India might be prepared to generate calibrated colour panoramas for little more than the cost of the donation of computers and software required to do the work.

I wonder if ESA could also be persuaded to help out as practice for operating the Exomars rover?

I would also like to know what the maximum possible life expectancy of Phoenix is? I think that I read that Phoenix can not last more than 5 months because after that the Sun will be too low in the sky at mid-day to generate enough power to do science. I would rather Phoenix be stoped by the Sun than by a budget cut.