Red Colony.com
My first question is, what made NASA decide to send not just one,
but two rovers to explore Mars?
Primary reason is that by sending two rovers to two very different sites,
you can effectively double the science at much less than twice the cost.
An added side benefit, obviously, is protection against certain types
of mission risks, via redundancy. The same thing was done on Mariners
8 and 9, Viking, and Voyager. It paid off with significantly improved
science on Viking and Voyager, and paid off bigtime when Mariner 8
went in the drink after the launch vehicle failed but Mariner 9 still
worked.
Where will these rovers actually land?
It hasn't been decided, and won't be decided for a couple of years. There
are some known constraints... we'll need to land within ten or fifteen
degrees of the equator in order to get adequate solar power, and we'll
need to land below some critical elevation in order to get adequate
deceleration out of the parachute. Beyond that, though, it's wide open.
The idea is to find places where the orbital data suggest that water
was once present, and to use the payload to read the geological record
at each site and learn what conditions were really like and how
habitable they were. We want to wait as long as possible to select
the actual sites, since that allows the maximum time for the science
community to work with the MGS data and find the best possible
sites.
Finally, what precautions are you taking to make sure that the
same mistakes that took place in previous missions will not occur once
again?
Plenty. The most obvious one is that this mission is adequately funded,
with healthy cost reserves to help us deal with the problems that will
occur. We've also got a much more rigorous review process planned than
has been the case for some recent missions. Perhaps most importantly,
we've got a lot of really major heritage... the Pathfinder
entry/descent/landing system being the most significant example. We'll
be the first mission ever launched to Mars with a landing system
that has been demonstrated previously to work.
Thank you, and good luck to you in all your endeavors.
Thanks... the good wishes and interest are greatly appreciated.
Cheers, SS
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