Recent Mars News Media Hype

Not quite sure if this is suited for General Questions, but, whats with all the recent media hype with this latetest Mars mission? Its like everyone is acting like we’ve never gone to Mars before.

Last night the NASA guy on Dave Letterman said, “We’ve waited 25 years to do this!”

Um, didn’t we do the exact same mission in 1997? With the exact same landing strategy (Air Bags) and the exact same Rover type mission profile? In 1997 the Sojourner Rover had a “sniffer” attached to examine the contents of the local rocks… the precise same thing this rover is doing (except Sojourner didn’t break down).

I don’t understand why the media and even NASA scientists are saying this is a new and novel thing.

No offense, but if you haven’t “gotten” that there’s something different, you haven’t been paying very close attention.

Sojourner was a small, limited rover designed under the “faster, cheaper” strategy. It was an adjunct to the base station. Most of the imaging instruments, the communication equipment, and other interuments were on the base, and the rover was required to return to the base.

Spirit and Opportunity are actually follow-ups to the science done by the Viking program. They are much larger, more capable, and independent. Once they leave the base station, the base is useless. They are capable of more science, and in places that are more scientifically interesting than the areas where Sojourner and Viking were able to go.

Another way of looking at it: Sojourner was primarily a geology mission, MER is primarily a hydrology and prerequisites-for-biology mission.

There was a very good PBS program about the MER program just last week. PBS tends to re-broadcast their stuff, so you may still be able to find it.