[X] My Assistant

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

...that is, the Nov. 2-4 meeting of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Lunar and Planetary Exploration which advises NASA on mission selection, to do a print article on it for "Astronomy" magazine.

The meeting's agenda is at http://www4.nas.edu/webcr.nsf/MeetingDispl...-D?OpenDocument ; it looks extremely interesting. Anyone have anything they'd especially like me to ask about while I'm there?

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

It's not obvious what 5 fps movies would be worth taking on the ground and what their data volume will be -- this is still a subject of ongoing analysis within the Mastcam team -- but again, we have a lot of buffer space so it's just a question of somewhat extending the downlink time.

For what it's worth, I remain of the opinion that MTO was not an appropriate way to spend the large amount of money it would have cost at this stage of martian exploration.

And with all due respect to the COMPLEX membership, I doubt they have deep insight into the details of ongoing mission development.

I don't see all that much science value in high-speed movies, either -- too much overlap between frames. As for the effects of MTO's loss, there's a half-hour report on the new MEPAG report, followed by a 1-hour report on the current form of the Mars program from Doug McCuistion, and rest assured that I intend to try to get some firm answers as to just how much science loss WILL result from the elimination of MTO. Given the huge amount of additional data that would have been returned by it, and the fact that it would have allowed very prolonged daily periods of radio contact with MSL for command purposes, I find it impossible to believe that the loss won't be serious -- but that of course is a separate question from whether the cancellation was necessary. NASA's space sciences division, as I noted once before, was up against it financially; something had to give.

And, really, the value of the COMPLEX meeting lies not just in whatever decisions they reach -- they've screwed up badly before (as in their approval of Goldin's ridiculously optimistic plan for a 2003 Mars sample return) -- but in the reports and presentations on the current state of affairs that they receive, which are likely to be the bigger focus for my article. Even the science data from Huygens -- given the maddening delays in the official "Nature" issue on the subject -- is likely to get important coverage at this meeting (I've written about two dozen questions on that alone).