How come a lander was not sent with MRO?

[willpittenger]

Since launch opportunities to Mars happen only every 2-3 years, why wasn't a new lander sent in the same window as MRO? Was it just too expensive? (MRO is probably the most expensive orbiter we have sent to Mars in a long time.) <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Will Pittenger<hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Add this user box to your Wikipedia User Page to show your support for the SDC forums: <div style="margin-left:1em">{{User:Will Pittenger/User Boxes/Space.com Account}}</div> </div>

 

[barrykirk]

I was under the impression that amoung other things MRO was supposed to be a rely station for follow up landers. That way those follow up landers would not need high power radios to send signals all the way to earth.<br /><br />Also, they would have had a mass budget. So within that budget they built the best orbiter they could and expected landers to be launched seperatly.

 

[willpittenger]

The title was chosen not for pure accuracy, but to fit within the maximum text length allowed for that field. As you can see in the text of my post, I was clearly talking about a seperate vehicle. I know about the relay part and do not consider it relevant as landers could still have been sent at the same time. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Will Pittenger<hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Add this user box to your Wikipedia User Page to show your support for the SDC forums: <div style="margin-left:1em">{{User:Will Pittenger/User Boxes/Space.com Account}}</div> </div>

 

[barrykirk]

Perhaps they weren't ready to launch the accompanying landers when MRO was ready to launch.<br /><br />By the time the landers were ready to launch they had missed the window of opportunity.

 

[willpittenger]

The landers you are talking about could not have been the MERs. So which landers were you talking about? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Will Pittenger<hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Add this user box to your Wikipedia User Page to show your support for the SDC forums: <div style="margin-left:1em">{{User:Will Pittenger/User Boxes/Space.com Account}}</div> </div>

 

[mrmorris]

I don't really understand the logic by which you think there *should* have been a lander with MRO. You do realize that one of MRO's main missions is to <b>scan</b> for good landing spots for both the Phoenix lander and the Mars Science Laboratory, don't you? MSL is still sitting in a CAD file, and if Phoenix had been sent along with MRO, then it would have had to sit around in orbit for months on end waiting for MRO to do the scouting. It would also have had to either carry a lot of excess propellant for braking into orbit or go through what is still a dangerous aerobraking process to achieve a stable orbit. Since a lander really doesn't *need* to get into a stable orbit before dropping to the surface, both the braking process and the extended orbit time simply adds more failure modes to the mission.

 

[willpittenger]

They could have simply relied on MGS and Mars Observer data like they have been for a long time. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Will Pittenger<hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Add this user box to your Wikipedia User Page to show your support for the SDC forums: <div style="margin-left:1em">{{User:Will Pittenger/User Boxes/Space.com Account}}</div> </div>

 

[qso1]

I agree with you that landers should have been part of the MRO and they could have utilized MGS data for landing. The reason more landers should be sent is as you stated, such limited opportunities to launch. We should launch orbiter/landers every launch window. Although I havn't seen an official reason, I'd say budgets restrictions played a significant role. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[bdewoody]

Maybe because they already had and still have two active landers/rovers on the surface. You've got to figure the cost of the management team back here on earth that has to monitor and supervise the activities of a surface rover. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <em><font size="2">Bob DeWoody</font></em> </div>

 

[willpittenger]

Still, they had the chance to send more MERs. Existing designs are cheaper than all new ones like MSL. More landing sites would provide more data. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Will Pittenger<hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Add this user box to your Wikipedia User Page to show your support for the SDC forums: <div style="margin-left:1em">{{User:Will Pittenger/User Boxes/Space.com Account}}</div> </div>

 

[themanwithoutapast]

Very easy answer: money. Depending on the sophistication of the lander an additional landing vehicle would have cost at least 100 million if not several hundred million dollars. Another point is, if you want to send a sophisticated lander, its mass would have probably made a launch together with the MRO impossible.<br /><br />What they could have done is send something similar to Beagle 2 that was part of ESA Mars Express - Beagle 2 was a low cost (I think a bit under hundred million euros) research lander with a limited purpose. The question is, if you already have the MERs on the ground working, why send a low cost lander in that same period that the MERs are still working which has actualll more limited capacities than the MERs?

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">why wasn't a new lander sent in the same window as MRO? Was it just too expensive? </font>/i><br /><br />I do wish NASA had a "standard rover" (or a family of standard rovers) that they could send during each launch window. There is a fair amount of cost in developing a lander or rover, software, concept of operations, and delivery system (parachute, heat shield, etc.), and it seems a shame to throw away everything each time and start from (relative) scratch for the next one.<br /><br />If subsequent mission costs could be held down by using (essentially) off-the-shelf rovers (OTSR), I could see NASA being more willing to land the rovers in riskier locations where more interesting science might be. Right now, with the high development costs, long lead times, and a given program manager and team having spent several years of their lives on a project, there isn't much incentive to take risks.<br /><br />Still, even if the cost of the rover, its development, and its operations were free, there is the launch costs, and they are still pretty high right now. Maybe SpaceX will help there.</i>

 

[docm]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>RadarRedux said;<br /><br />I do wish NASA had a "standard rover" (or a family of standard rovers) that they could send during each launch window. There is a fair amount of cost in developing a lander or rover, software, concept of operations, and delivery system (parachute, heat shield, etc.), and it seems a shame to throw away everything each time and start from (relative) scratch for the next one.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />Yup.<br /><br />IMO they need to <i>carefully</i> update the more-than-proven Opportunity run-ware design with an eye towards modularity on the topside, allowing experiment modules specific to the mission to be swapped in. <br /><br />Next: mass produce, or license it to someone who can. They could probably turn a profit selling them as harsh environment robot platforms. Their tough as nails performance on Mars is the kind of advertising money can't buy. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[willpittenger]

If you reread the post, I was clearly talking about a seperate launch. Why do people always read what they want to hear? I am rather tired of it. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Will Pittenger<hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Add this user box to your Wikipedia User Page to show your support for the SDC forums: <div style="margin-left:1em">{{User:Will Pittenger/User Boxes/Space.com Account}}</div> </div>

 

[mrmorris]

<font color="yellow">"They could have simply relied on MGS and Mars Observer data..."</font><br /><br />What's the point of sending MRO out with resolutions many times greater than that of previous orbiters if you're not going to then give it time to gather data before sending a lander out? No matter what, NASA will never have the funds to send more than a handful of rovers over the next decade or two. A planet is a pretty big place, so you want to ba able to drop those rovers in the spots where they have the least chance of being destroyed while simultaneously having the best chance of being able to make new discoveries. It would be a pretty bug "D'oh!" moment to have sent out a lander with MRO at a price tag of $150 million or so, only to:<br /><br />A -- Lose the lander -- and find out a couple of months later from MRO data that the spot had dangers not visible with prior resolutions.<br /><br />or<br /><br />B -- Set the lander down safely -- only to find a couple of months later from MRO data that a <b>much</b> better location for that lander's instrument package exists on the other side of Mars.<br /><br />There's no great rush. MRO is going to give NASA a map of Mars like they've never had before. That map will give them data that will allow much better targeting of future landers. It's better for NASA to spend 26 months waiting for the next launch window rather than spending $150 million sending a lander with target data that's being made more and more obsolete every day that MRO is in orbit.

 

[themanwithoutapast]

Well in that case my first part of the answer applies, which you actually already mentioned in your post - money.<br /><br />The better question is however, why did NASA not send a 'hitchhiker' lander on MRO, like ESA did on Mars Express. That's answered by the second part of my post.

 

[spacester]

mrmorris, I agree completely with your logic but would add that post-MRO the situatiuon will be different enough that the analysis is no longer valid IMO.<br /><br />IOW, after the MRO imaging is "complete" we will have as high resolution imaging of scientifically interesting targets as we are ever going to need for our rovers, so at that point there will be no need to hold back in our deployment of rovers.<br /><br />Speaking of rovers, the idea of recycling the design work on a rover by building more copies of the same is of course an important step forward in getting more bang for the buck. But I would submit that the limited capability of Spirit and Opportunity - in terms of size and speed and sampling - makes them a poor choice to start the practice.<br /><br />(Before moving on, please please please everybody do not think I am not a HUGE fan of the MERs and the folks responsible for their outstanding success. I'm just saying . . . <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> )<br /><br />The Phoenix lander to be launched next year is a recycle job itself IIRC - it's the second Mars Polar Lander probe, right? So that is not a particularly good candidate for design recycling either.<br /><br />But with Mars Science Labarotory, now we're talking. I would love to see support for the idea of releasing the design details to the public, even if only the non-instrumented parts (chassis, power systems, navigation, etc.). Let people build their own versions and see what they can do with them. Why not use it as a basis for Lunar rovers, or even as R & D projects here on Earth. Build a bunch of them, get them in classrooms across the land. If the powers that be were to decide early on to do this, they could take care of all the legal issues (intellectual property rights, ITAR restrictions, etc.) as an integral part of the design work. I've got to believe it's not too late to implement the idea. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[mrmorris]

<font color="yellow">"...after the MRO imaging is "complete" we will have as high resolution imaging of scientifically interesting targets as we are ever going to need for our rovers, so at that point there will be no need to hold back in our deployment of rovers."</font><br /><br />You only say that because you haven't seen the plans for MODO (Mars Overwhelming Deployment Orbiter) with visible light resolution an order of magnitude greater than MRO, plus spectroscopic mapping capability to give mineral mapping at sub-meter resolution, paired UV laser and heterodyning interferometer to act as a bio marker and detector array, and the OASIS instrument package to detect and quantify shallow subsurface water ice deposits. Mind you -- <b>no one</b> has seen the stats for it, since I made it all up.<br /><br />MRO should vastly expand our knowledge of the surface of Mars. It's the current greatest thing and we should use the data it returns to target our next landers and to design its successor. However, one of the things that MRO and Mars Express are likely to teach us about Mars is what we need to know *next* that they don't have the ability to help with. At that point, NASA or ESA will design an orbiter to do just that... at which point we'll use the new orbiter to gather data to target a next generation of landers...<br /><br />I'm not disagreeing with you -- I just like things very clear. One of the thing that each generation of probes (be they orbiters or landers) teach is what the following generation's design should be. Using the MRO data to throw 40 landers at Mars using the current technology & information base is liable to get us the same set of questions and answers... times 40. Answering the *new* questions will still require another generation.

 

[spacester]

You don't know how jealous I am of your ability to generate plausible-sounding techno-babble. <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /> Hint: green with envy.<br /><br />Come to think of it, having just written that, perhaps that hints at the contrast here. As much as I like to dream, I insist on making my best effort to force myself to see the pragmatic, and to reject the idea that scientific exploration is boundless in scope.<br /><br />Hang on, let me explain.<br /><br />Certainly science is not to be expected to ever reach an "end point" - we will never know everything and we should never be satisfied with what we think we do know.<br /><br />But I throw the words 'exploration' and 'scope' in there for a reason.<br /><br />Scientific <i>exploration</i> is, in my view, about what comes after - a preparation for follow-on human activities that are not purely scientific - settlement and resource extraction to name the two obvious things.<br /><br />The <i>scope</i> of planetary science is the result of a political process made necessary by limited resources devoted to the field.<br /><br />So the idea that we will just keep on seeking deeper and deeper scientific <i>understanding</i> to the exclusion of, or at least the interminable delay of, those follow-on activities is absurd to me.<br /><br />If the purpose of the orbital study is to identify the interesting and safe places to deploy rovers, and the images are good enough to make those judgments with high confidence, then the images are good enough.<br /><br />If your imaging is such that the resolution is on the order of ten times smaller than the rover, why do you need imaging that is ten times better than that? Set the rover down already, let's go!<br /><br />IMO 40 rovers may very well generate 40 times as many questions, but the nature of those questions will be different. They will be about global variations, and the best way to explain those variations will be to A) study the orbital images you have in the can, and B) deploy stil <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[willpittenger]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Why not use [MRO] as a basis for Lunar rovers?<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />Well, my main suggestion would be to strip it of the automation. It would work faster as a remotely operated vehicle given the 2 second time delay in transmissions to and from the Moon. Automation would make a little more sense on the the far side of the Moon -- but only because I don't know what the time delay would be to bounce the signal around. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Will Pittenger<hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Add this user box to your Wikipedia User Page to show your support for the SDC forums: <div style="margin-left:1em">{{User:Will Pittenger/User Boxes/Space.com Account}}</div> </div>

 

[spacester]

Right, stuff like that . . .whatever seems best to the mission designers. I'm a big fan of telepresence, so I like that idea. If mission designers can build or buy a proven chassis and power system, they are that much closer to doing affordable lunar exploration.<br /><br />(Of course, you meant [MSL], not [MRO], right?) <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[mrmorris]

<font color="yellow">"If the purpose of the orbital study is to identify the interesting and safe places to deploy rovers, and the images are good enough to make those judgments with high confidence, then the images are good enough."</font><br /><br />I believe that the resolution of images MRO returns will be able to handle 'safe' with no problem. 'Interesting' is another matter. Personally, I expect that MRO is going to generate images that provide thousands, if not tens of thousands of <b>potentially</b> interesting locations. I think scientists around the world will point to a particular patch in a photo and say <i>"Hey -- that looks like (scientific gobbledygook). I sure wish we could get either a rover down there or a photo with ten times this resolution."</i> What I'm saying is that MODO will have the resolution to verify (or refute) much of the potentially interesting finds that MRO brings to light... because we will not be able to deploy rovers to all those locations. Certainly there will be rovers deployed to those locations that seem most interesting, or for which the largest concentration of interesting locations is accessible -- but it's certain that thousands of these locations will go roverless.<br /><br /><font color="yellow">"If your imaging is such that the resolution is on the order of ten times smaller than the rover, why do you need imaging that is ten times better than that? Set the rover down already, let's go!"</font><br /><br />I'm not sure what you're saying here. MRO can resolve the MERs themselves -- at least to the point that we can recognize them because we know what they are. If we <b>didn't</b> know what the landers were -- the photos MRO has returned of them would simply be that of 'potentially' interesting objects. MRO certainly can't *resolve* objects 1/10th the size of the MERs.

 

[spacester]

Clearly, I was less than clear. <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /><br /><br />My starting point is the trade-off that mission managers have faced between maximum safety and maximum science. IMO that trade-off dominated the decision making on MER site selection. Essentially what I'm saying is that with MRO data, as you say, we will be able to handle 'safe' with no problem.<br /><br />From that starting point, I project into the future after accounting for the presumed existence of massive MRO data; combined with my predilection for human exploration as soon as practical I am lead to the conclusion that MODO's development should not be a foregone conclusion. It should be weighed against deploying more rovers with the same money, because rovers will establish ground truth for particular sites for follow-on development, e.g. ISRU and Settlement sites.<br /><br />Now if our only objective is pure planetary science, as opposed to what I would call <i>applied</i> planetary science, then I suppose there is no limit to the resolution we would want from our orbiters and the cycle of mutually supportive development of orbiters and rovers should continue ad infinitum. But if we accept the position that we need not understand everything there is to know about everything under every rock before manned mission precursor activity commences, then at some point, we should shift our attention from pure scientific inquiry to practical missions attempting to begin answering the question of the viability of man living there. Thus, MODO may very well represent misplaced priorities from my point of view.<br /><br />(On the paragraph regarding resolution being 1/10th of the rover's size, that was only about the 'safe' part, which we're in agreement on. MRO will easily be able to resolve MSL, correct?) <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[willpittenger]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>MRO will easily be able to resolve MSL, correct?<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />Well, MRO has already shown a MER as more than a few pixels. MSL is supposed to be bigger than a MER. MSL will probably have to have camoflage or a good rock to hide. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Will Pittenger<hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Add this user box to your Wikipedia User Page to show your support for the SDC forums: <div style="margin-left:1em">{{User:Will Pittenger/User Boxes/Space.com Account}}</div> </div>

 

[spacester]

My point exactly. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>