alt Hacker NewsI never really understood why you'd have Perseverance drill the cores and then just leave them on the ground for an underdefined future mission to retrieve.
Replies
yabones • today at 8:16 PM
An all-in-one solution would be far too heavy. Splitting the tasks up makes a lot of sense. Having all the equipment onboard to drill cores, quickly analyze them, decide if they're worth keeping, and then putting samples in containers is enough work for one rover.
* Storing all the samples onboard means a larger and heavier rover
* Mass budget squeeze means no more helicopter
* The return requires a ground launch from mars, so no more SkyCrane delivery system
➕ show 1 reply
q_andrew • today at 7:51 PM
Because the powers that be would have deemed a real plan as too expensive.
➕ show 2 replies
Perseverance, obivously, has onboard instruments to analize the samples before dumping them on the ground