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from the escape-from-the-return-to-the-moon dept.
The Washington Post reports that NASA "has canceled its only lunar rover currently in development," Resource Prospector. From Wikipedia:
Resource Prospector is a cancelled mission concept by NASA of a rover that would have performed a survey expedition on a polar region of the Moon. The rover was to attempt to detect and map the location of volatiles such as hydrogen, oxygen and lunar water which could foster more affordable and sustainable human exploration to the Moon, Mars, and other Solar System bodies.
The mission concept was still in its pre-formulation stage, when it was scrapped in April 2018. The Resource Prospector mission was proposed to be launched in 2022.
takyon: Meanwhile, NASA is "pushing hard on deep space exploration" with the Moon as its goal.
Also at Space.com, The Verge, and Fortune.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday April 30 2018, @04:28AM (4 children)
All coms coming from a Rover would certainly be easy to intercept, no?
NASA has always been open, publishing just about everything.
If they've already got hi-rez images of the area, maybe they don't need anything more.
Maybe a Rover is a waste of money, a distraction, and something they feel they don't have to wait for.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday April 30 2018, @05:27AM (1 child)
So it's the HTTPS traffic going between a WiFi device and router.
Is anywhere to say this cannot change?
Well, the Chinese definitely chang'e-d; three times already, and in their second mission [wikipedia.org] (as early as 2010)
I have this feeling the Chinese are progressing [wikipedia.org] at a higher pace than the current one NASA is showing in regards with Lunar exploration. Maybe I'm wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday April 30 2018, @05:56AM
Smart tweet, you think like my Generals. Like some of my Generals. My great military has many secret things in outer space. Believe me, we're going to have much more of that. My predecessors promised not to put our nuclear arsenal up there, a treaty. We can cancel that treaty. And we can put our brave soldiers up there. I went to California, I went to Marine Core Air Station Miramar. And I said, space is a war-fighting domain, just like the land, air and sea. We may even have a Space Force, develop another one, Space Force. We have the Air Force, we'll have the Space Force. Then I said, what a great idea, Maybe we’ll have to do that. So think of that: Space Force, because we are spending a lot and we have a lot of private money coming in, tremendous. Our great military is vital to ensuring America continues to lead the way into the stars. Onward & upward!!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday April 30 2018, @05:33AM
How many years or decades will it take for China to begin industrialization of the Moon? No, not a small colony, but significant industrial activity, manned or robotic, with reusable rockets and cheap $/kg to get things onto the surface of the Moon. Will China's current one party system survive that long? We'll see.
NASA requires authentication to control its spacecraft these days, and may be encrypting the data sent back as well. And your wild speculation that the capabilities would be redundant, unnecessary, and only help the Chinese is just flatly false [theverge.com]:
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday April 30 2018, @04:45PM
Or maybe, just maybe, NASA's limited budget and ever-shifting priorities have taken yet another victim, which had previously gone through a million reviews and committees agreeing that there was more science per dollar with that rover than with also-attractive alternatives, enough to justify allocating the funding.
Why would the Chinese have anything to do with this ?