

NASA's Next Mars Lander to Begin Construction - dsil
http://news.discovery.com/space/insight-nasas-next-mars-lander-to-begin-construction-140522.htm

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Jemaclus
Serious question that people here may or may not know the answer to. They keep
making Mars _Landers_. With all the tech advances in the drone world, what are
the pros/cons of a Mars Drone that flies around instead of rolling around on
wheels?

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Gravityloss
The air is very very thin. It could not dig or brush or use a microscope or
put the samples in an oven or chemical analyzers. Also we already have good
overhead images from satellites. Planes have been proposed nevertheless.

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Jemaclus
Sure, but I mean, images from 50 feet away are gonna be higher resolution than
images from 2 miles away, yes? So it seems to me that if they could get some
drones flying around, they could do some cool things like collect samples for
a regular Mars Lander to process or get higher res photos or do some
spectrometry or something over a wider range than a lander can do... right?

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orenmazor
Is there anywhere I can go to actually see NASA's (or CSA or ESA)'s "Lessons
Learned"?

I'd love to track how they've evolved different characteristics of
spaceflight/rovers.

to improve my KSP game, obviously.

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markbnine
Beyond Apollo:
[http://www.wired.com/category/beyondapollo/](http://www.wired.com/category/beyondapollo/)

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nsxwolf
Why won't they send something that can directly detect the existence of
microbes? It seems they're always after indirect signs. The focus this time
seems purely geological in nature.

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omilu
I'm assuming space x would provide the launch services? Does Nasa even do
rockets to outer space anymore?

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rzimmerman
NASA doesn't do manned launches at the moment. There are several other
providers for unmanned launches (including for Mars payloads). SpaceX has
never done anything beyond Earth orbit, so they'd be an unlikely choice for
this.

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trose
Dear NASA, Can we get some of this instrumentation in Kerbal Space Program
ASAP?

