NASA is close to deciding whether to spend an extra $150 million to send the InSight lander to Mars in 2018 or cancel the mission after an instrument problem made the spacecraft miss a launch opportunity this year, with a verdict on the project’s future expected within weeks, officials said.
Persistent problems with a seismometer instrument package will keep NASA’s InSight Mars lander from departing for the red planet during a March launch period, and officials said they will consider shelving the $675 million project if the issues prove too costly to fix.
The crew of STS-114, the first shuttle flight after the 2003 Columbia accident, present video from their mission and answer questions from the audience at Space Center Houston. (Membership required.)
A senior NASA official said Monday the agency could select two new robotic planetary science missions next year for launch in the early 2020s, and the five finalists favor Venus and asteroid research.
The final flight of Space Shuttle Discovery seen from the ET-Cam mounted near the top of its fuel tank. Mission STS-133 lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center on February 24, 2011. (Membership required)