“Game-changing” and “affordable” are perhaps the most repeated adjectives spoken by NASA officials in the last few months. The premise underlying President Obama’s proposed space policy is that development of new space technologies can speed space exploration at lower costs.
But skeptics in Congress counter that NASA has provided too few details to convince them that they should largely throw away the $10 billion that has been spent so far in NASA’s Constellation moon program and spend billions more on something new.
At a workshop last month in Galveston, members of NASA study teams looking at how to put in effect the Obama policy presented their current thinking to 450 attendees from industry and academia.
The NASA presenters, in describing how the space agency could make it to Mars on a limited budget, said their ideas represented “a point of departure” that would be revised with feedback.
For Mission to Mars, a New Road Map New York Times
In Crucial Test, New Probe to Begin Orbiting Mars New York Times
After the failures of its two predecessors, an American spacecraft is fast approaching Mars for a try at restoring success to the program of exploring the planet’s geological and, just possibly, biological history.
New Rocket Engines Fuel Dreams of Manned Mars Flights New York Times
A new type of rocket engine under development could halve the travel time between Earth and Mars — should NASA ever decide to send astronauts there. “I think it’s the technology that’s going to take us to Mars,” said Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz, a shuttle astronaut and director of the Advanced Space Propulsion Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Fears That All Is Lost as Lander Stays Silent New York Times
A critical attempt to communicate with the missing Mars Polar Lander Sunday brought nothing but more interplanetary silence and the growing fear that the spacecraft and its $165 million mission are beyond recovery.
A New Frontier Aboard the Mars Direct New York Times
Dr. Robert Zubrin, 47, an astronautical engineer and founder of the Mars Society, a group advocating space travel to the neighbor planet, was having coffee in Manhattan on a recent autumn morning.
Shaping Martian Rocks New York Times
When the Pathfinder mission beamed images from the surface of Mars two years ago, Yogi, Stimpy and Flat Top were among the stars of the show. They were not characters in some Three Stooges remake; they were rocks at the landing site, and the mission’s remote-controlled rover spent a lot of time photographing, X-raying and otherwise examining them.
Society Organizes to Make a Case for Humans on Mars New York Times
BRIAN BARNWELL has a nose for historical events. In 1955, he attended the splashy opening of Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif. In 1969, he visited Florida to witness the launching of Apollo 11, which sent men to land on the Moon. And, last week, Mr. Barnwell, a 52-year-old real estate appraiser from Santa Barbara, Calif., took his sons, 14-year-old Brendan and 10-year-old Sean, to Boulder, Colo., for another special moment in the chronicles of American culture — the founding convention of the Mars Society, a group of people who fervently believe it possible to send humans to Mars with existing technology at an affordable cost if only the American people will get behind the idea.