Results of the meeting of the NASA special committee: Curiosity will travel less, drill more, 7 "alien" missions are extended

If you look closely, you can see the traces of the wheels Curiosity, left them on the ground of Mars.

Recently, a special scientific committee evaluated the implementation of NASA's current missions on other planets and in outer space. At the same time, 7 current missions were evaluated, including rovers, Cassini probe and some others (for more details, see the continuation). The NASA evaluation committee has been given considerable authority, and it’s quite easy to just complete any of the missions if it received a negative rating.

The good news is that all 7 missions received an excellent or good rating. True, the Curiosity team was criticized for the fact that the rover "travels a lot, and few drills." The committee was particularly displeased by the rover team’s intention to conduct only 8 drilling operations, in addition to those already performed.
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Scientists considered that the rover inefficiently uses its scientific potential, driving around Mars and looking at the clouds (in fact, one of the tasks of the rover is to observe the atmosphere of Mars). In general, nothing critical, but the rover team was asked to add “more science” to the Curiosity work plan.


While the committee meets, the rover calms itself with the contemplation of the sky of Mars.

By the way, two other missions, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Opportunity, could have been closed altogether, but successfully avoided such an undesirable end. LRO and Opportunity will be able to work for another two years until the next meeting of the above-mentioned committee. True, one of the LRO tools, the Mini-RF radar, will no longer be used.



The Cassini probe, which received another 3 additional years to work with Saturn and its satellites, received the best rating among all the missions. The Cassini team decided to probe between the surface of Saturn and the inner sector of the ring.

Here are the estimates that various NASA missions received from the committee:

• Cassini (1997) Excellent
• Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (2009) Excellent / very good
• Mars Opportunity rover (2003) Excellent / very good
• Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2005) Excellent / very good
• Mars Express (European-led mission, 2003) Very Good
• Mars Odyssey (2001) Very Good
• Mars Curiosity rover (2011) Very Good / Good

Let's hope that everything goes smoothly and no missions will be closed in the near future.

Via sciencemag