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NASA Cancels Lunar Rover

posted by takyon on Monday April 30 2018, @02:16AM   
from the escape-from-the-return-to-the-moon dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

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.

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Original Submission

• Re:Too much 60s ?Re:Too much 60s ? (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday April 30 2018, @05:27AM (1 child)

  by c0lo (156) on Monday April 30 2018, @05:27AM (#673604) Journal

  All coms coming from a Rover would certainly be easy to intercept, no?

  So it's the HTTPS traffic going between a WiFi device and router.

  NASA has always been open, publishing just about everything.

  Is anywhere to say this cannot change?

  If they've already got hi-rez images of the area, maybe they don't need anything more.

  Well, the Chinese definitely chang'e-d; three times already, and in their second mission [wikipedia.org] (as early as 2010)

  Chang'e 2 was part of the first phase of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, and conducted research from a 100-km-high lunar orbit in preparation for the December 2013 soft landing by the Chang'e 3 lander and rover.
  ...
  After completing its primary objective, the probe left lunar orbit for the Earth–Sun L2 Lagrangian point, to test the Chinese tracking and control network, making the China National Space Administration the third space agency after NASA and ESA to have visited this point.
  ...
  In April 2012, Chang'e 2 departed L2 to begin an extended mission to the asteroid 4179 Toutatis, which it successfully flew by in December 2012

  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/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

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• Re:Too much 60s ?(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday April 30 2018, @05:56AM

  by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Monday April 30 2018, @05:56AM (#673610) Journal

  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!!

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