NASA assembles two new panels to review its Mars Sample Return mission plans
NASA yesterday announced that it has assembled two new panels to review its Mars Sample Return mission plans, dubbed the strategy review and the analysis team, to be done in conjunction with the proposals the agency has already received from the private sector.
The team’s report is anticipated by the end of 2024 and will examine options for a complete mission design, which may be a composite of multiple studied design elements. The team will not recommend specific acquisition strategies or partners.
The strategy review team has been chartered under a task to the Cornell Technical Services contract. The team may request input from a NASA analysis team that consists of government employees and expert consultants.
The analysis team also will provide programmatic input such as a cost and schedule assessment of the architecture recommended by the strategy review team.
The first panel contains a mixture of NASA officials and scientists, while the second is mostly made up of NASA managers.
Whatever these panels decide, it is very clear that major changes are required to this project in order to get the Perseverance core samples on Mars back to Earth within a reasonable amount of time and at an acceptable cost. The present project design is chaotic, confused, and running significantly overbudget and behind schedule, with no indication anything will change in the near future.
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NASA yesterday announced that it has assembled two new panels to review its Mars Sample Return mission plans, dubbed the strategy review and the analysis team, to be done in conjunction with the proposals the agency has already received from the private sector.
The team’s report is anticipated by the end of 2024 and will examine options for a complete mission design, which may be a composite of multiple studied design elements. The team will not recommend specific acquisition strategies or partners.
The strategy review team has been chartered under a task to the Cornell Technical Services contract. The team may request input from a NASA analysis team that consists of government employees and expert consultants.
The analysis team also will provide programmatic input such as a cost and schedule assessment of the architecture recommended by the strategy review team.
The first panel contains a mixture of NASA officials and scientists, while the second is mostly made up of NASA managers.
Whatever these panels decide, it is very clear that major changes are required to this project in order to get the Perseverance core samples on Mars back to Earth within a reasonable amount of time and at an acceptable cost. The present project design is chaotic, confused, and running significantly overbudget and behind schedule, with no indication anything will change in the near future.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
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c/o Robert Zimmerman
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Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
So, try to fix a major bureaucratic screwup with… more bureaucracy. Sounds like a plan.
At the risk of being tediously repetitious, I must again ask why they don’t just ask Elon to have one of his astronauts bring the samples back in their carry-on? Why complicate things? Sheesh!
Failing that, they could ask Biden to ask Chairman Xi.