NASA has just announce that the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars, and support and science teams here on the Earth have been given up to 18 months of additional funding. This is great news for the MER project.
Much of the credit for this extensions surely belongs to the Assembly, Testing, and Launch Operations (ATLO) team who gave us these amazing and apparently unstoppable rovers. Additionally, there must have been strong lobbying effort by current team leadership and, as a huge fan of these missions, I couldn't me more thankful to those efforts.
There is no doubt in my mind, though, that the key factor in this extension was the popularity of these programs brought about by such an open and accessible process.
Thanks to all of the decision makers who helped ensure that the MER missions were so fully public at the websites and on NASA TV. Thanks to all of the engineering and science team memebers who took time out from their "real work" to share up to date news with the public, and thanks to all of the "behind the scenes" people who facilitated that wonderful communication channel -- especially the web team who made sure that the latest and greatest raw image data was immediately available to the world. Oh, and what an amazing product we got from all the great folk in JPL's image processing team who have given us such wonderful views into this no longer so alien land.
You can read the press release about the extension over at the MER Newsroom.
Posted by asa at April 6, 2005 06:32 AMOTOH, low-profile but important projects scientifically, like the Voyagers, Hubble, are likely to be cancelled.
Take a look though at the recent Titan imaging from Cassini.
Good for you. Poor folks else where die of poverty in america. Lets take the human race forward with the technological gizmo !!.
How about for starters eliminate poverty in the world's richest country, for fsck sake.
Posted by: Ashamed on April 6, 2005 08:36 AMAshamed: I'm pretty sure this type of research is a fraction of the costs of other far more controversial policy choices of the current US government.
Posted by: alfons on April 6, 2005 08:54 AMAnd a great job by academia (specifically the work put in by Cornell) for helping to keep the mission in the open, and those who used it to continue to push NASA as a relevant agency in this new era.
Posted by: jjones on April 6, 2005 10:59 AMAshamed, space exploration has brought about many technologies that we take for granted today. And in the future it is likely to result in some pretty amazing discoveries, perhaps a solution to the world's energy crisis, who knows? A discovery such as that would change the lives of everyone around the world, and would do a great deal of good towards getting rid of poverty.
Posted by: jdaly on April 6, 2005 12:15 PMAshamed, where did you get your computer? You mean you spent money on something not necessary for your direct survival, when there are still poor people in the world? How fscking greedy!
And BTW, no one has ever "died of poverty".
Posted by: toby on April 6, 2005 02:25 PM