Mars Insight
time is running short for the instrument
What time constraints do they actually have? We've seen Martian rovers extend their initial lifespans by several factors, so why would this one come to an end of life soon?
SpaceX gets its feet wet, digging for victory with Mars InSight and a changing of the ISS guard await rocket fanciers in this week's summary of space news. SpaceX splashes down after Starlink launch SpaceX's postponed Starlink mission finally got off the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station SLC-40 launchpad last week, the lift-off …
time is running short for the instrument
What time constraints do they actually have? We've seen Martian rovers extend their initial lifespans by several factors, so why would this one come to an end of life soon?
It's hard to say. It could be that the lander isn't going to do well through a Martian winter or that all of the other science is done and keeping a staff and facilities dedicated to this one last experiment isn't a good use of funds. I'm sure they've learned a bunch of lessons on how to get it to work the next time. You don't get a hit every time you go to bat and doing stuff on Mars is tough.
The MER rovers were awesome and just kept going and going. Since they were mobile, they could do the same science over and over, just in different places. In their case it was useful to keep funding the program until they finally wore out.
I recall the partly borked comet lander which managed to measure the hardness of the ice as 'harder than concrete' after the testing hammer broke as they ramped it up. Yup, they hit it with a hammer. So ice on some comets is harder than concrete. Which also explained why the tethering barbs bounced of it so the lander bounced about before coming to rest.
The next comet landers therefore cannot rely on grapples. Suckers don't work in a vacuum do they? It might therefore have to land at a pace so slow it just, lands.
A challenge which will need to be overcome by a company with a business model that would really like first stages to get more than four flights.Since the first successful drone ship landing, it looks like they're running at a success rate of about 85% for landing attempts in that mode, or just about a 50% chance of surviving four attempts.
Room for improvement perhaps but they will no doubt have learned a lot from this failure. I'm pretty curious to know what went wrong.
People don't respect our own planet what give us the right to explore outside or dump rubbish in space , this is wrong and letting Americans go gun first is not right if there is life out side this planet it probably hiding as we are nature's worst enemy and no doubt kill the first thing that moves. This planet is about crack because of selfish people we have not the rights to explore outside this planet let alone let the rich dump rubbish out in space or in our seas, space would be great if we respected our own living planet and the living things here.