We interrupt this NASA-bashing (and I suspect there will be more; I have some more items I’m tracking down right now in fact) for this announcement:
On Friday, February 24 at 13:00, NASA will be holding a press briefing about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a pretty beefy mission due to enter orbit around the Red Planet on March 10. I think that link will have a public webcast of the briefing, but there is nothing there at the moment. NASA TV will carry it, but on their “Public, Education, and Media channel”. Go to their website for info on how to watch.
I’ll add that Mars exploration is something NASA is doing very, very well. The rovers are still operating more than two years after arriving on Mars, and their nominal mission lifetime was 90 days. Not too bad, exceeding the planned lifetime by a factor of 7… and the Mars Global Surveyor is still returning so many images the scientists can’t keep up with them. People will be studying those images for decades.
This science is the kind of thing NASA needs to give more funding to, devote more time to, and promote a whole lot more.
