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[PTTG??]

If only we had some kind of plan or mission to get more geologists and stuff, like, actually on Mars.

[10ebbor10]

Actually, geologists are what you don't need. In fact, you want to keep all humans as far away from these sites as possible. Even with precautionary measures, the use of an airlock still release a not insignificant amount of air in the local surroundings, combined with many foreign pollutants. Additionally, the spacesuits are probably littered with them as well.

What you need is a highly qualified and decontaminated robot, which will look like an awful waste of money when it turns out it wasn't water after all.

[WillowLuman]

I hate it when people talk as if the ultimate aim of space exploration is capitalist profit, and not furthering of knowledge, and weigh the importance of missions only in such terms...

It's true that you don't actually need the geologists on site. The probe is there to send the data back to them, for them to analyze. Perhaps when our propulsion becomes advanced enough we can retrieve samples from Mars, but for now the probes will have to do.

[PTTG??]

How do you propose to capture a transient phenomenon with robotic sensors if it takes at least half an hour for you to tell the robot to respond?

I know we need to keep Mars clean, but just think; if the exploration of Earth had been done the way we're exploring space, we'd think all of North America is just like the Caribbean. We're wasting time. I've got 60 years left and I don't want to waste them watching robots molest rocks.

[10ebbor10]

By automating the robot. We made massive steps towards that. The ESA has various plans for robots that would operate completely autonomously, and NASA's Curiosity rover is also progressing well. And it beats the other option, which is sending a human to investigate. After all, that basically boils down too:

A: Waste of money, because it didn't happen to be water after all.
B: Success. It was water. We have now successfully contaminated the only known liquid water sample on Mars, making it entirely useless.

Truly, it's like the difference between reading a book, and setting it on fire. Truly, the fire is more spectacular, but you destroy any chance of getting something useful out of it. Humans look pretty in the paper, but 9 times out of ten, a robot is better.

Note that I don't object to setting up a way-station in Mars orbit or on one of the moons or something. That should help with delay's and such.

[WillowLuman]

Quite. And even without way-stations, you don't send the robot one command at a time, because that's ridiculous. You send it a whole program to execute.

[10ebbor10]

Gaia mission to launch on the 19.

The Global Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics (GAIA) will use it 1 gigapixel camera (largest in the solar system) to photograph the universe in never before seen Full-Ultra-High 3D Definition. It's estimated to make a detailed map of about 1% of the milky way, or 1 billion astronomical objects. These don't include planets, Quasars and other objects photographed along the way.

((Note: IIRC, GAIA doesn't have the zooming capabilities of the Hubble, so it's not going to be observing shiny deep-space objects.))

[RedKing]

The Global Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics (GAIA) will use it 1 gigapixel camera (largest in the solar system) to photograph the universe in never before seen Full-Ultra-High 3D Definition.

Man....that's going to make one hell of a wallpaper.

EDIT: More seriously, I wonder how many exoplanets they'll be able to pull out of that, since each star will get up to 70 observations over time. Gonna be keeping astronomy teams busy for a while. Although, isn't there a distributed processing initiative looking for exoplanets?

[WillowLuman]

Yep. I know a few people who participate.

[10ebbor10]

There probably is. I think GAIA was estimated to detect at least 10 000 planets, and 500 000 quasars.

[WillowLuman]

[smirk]

The BOINC program (that SETI runs on) is pretty damn awesome. I think the distributed exoplanet hunt is something else entirely, though. Designed for more human interaction, with a game-like framework.

[10ebbor10]

This maybe?

[smirk]

Yup; that's the bunny. The Zooniverse framework.

[10ebbor10]

Emergency repairs needed on ISS. No need to panic.