Getting On-Track for Prospective Mars Missions
“The vision is about Mars – ultimately it’s about Mars and beyond,” says Ayanna Howard, a space robotics expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, US. “It’s not about the Moon – that’s just step one.”
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Developing technologies to explore Mars are beginning to be pressured on NASA with the latest report out, as envisioned by President Bush’s “Vision for Space Exploration.” The latest report began in February 2008 from a group of former NASA officials and ex-astronauts who seriously urged NASA to downgrade its plans for a lunar mission and focus more and more on Mars.
Recently, the National Research Council (NRC), a committee that was chosen by the United States National Academy of Sciences to review NASA’s efforts, also came to the same conclusions. With their 25-member committee, they reviewed NASA’s Exploration Technology Development Program (ETDP)—the program in charge of developing technologies for NASA’s future human exploration missions.
When they reviewed the 22 technologies that the program thought was crucial for “Vision for Space Exploration,” they felt there were several concerns outlined. One was NASA’s current focus on primarily establishing a human presence on the Moon instead of Mars, with very few technologies focusing on getting to the red planet.
Another major concern is that NASA is not tapping into cutting-edge research that is being developed in universities and other major institutes, but fine-tuning the present-tested technologies. Very few of the technologies have addressed what needs to be done to get to Mars,” Howard told New Scientist.
A perceived lack of adequate testing facilities for both the Moon and Mars technologies was seen by the committee, with committee member Steven Howe of Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls, US, saying NASA should have more sophisticated facilities for simulating the lunar environment.
“What we’re talking about is a large-scale facility where you can drive your candidate rover around in that environment, where you have lights that simulate the Sun, and cold walls that simulate the cold in the night,” says Howe, worrying that if changes are not made soon, NASA could fall far short of its lofty goals: “We’re not on track to get to the Moon on time and Mars is hardly even being considered.”
This entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 8:03 pm and is filed under Mission Objectives, Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
