Computer Science
Scientific paper
Jul 2000
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2000came.work..265r&link_type=abstract
Concepts and Approaches for Mars Exploration, p. 265
Computer Science
Mars Exploration, Mars Sample Return Missions, Mission Planning, Mars Missions, Project Management, Mars Surveyor 98 Program, Extraterrestrial Life
Scientific paper
The Mars Exploration Program represents an unprecedented opportunity to study and explore a planet and an environment beyond our own. While this opportunity represents the most important development in planetary exploration since the initial robotic survey of the Solar System, it presents organizational and architectural challenges that have simply not been faced in the NASA robotic exploration endeavor to date. These challenges, of flying frequent, probably interrelated, missions to Mars within a moderate, flat fiscal environment, were responded to in the late 1990's by the Mars Surveyor Program. The architecture that evolved within this program became singularly motivated by the search for life and singularly focused upon a sample return mission (to be executed over many opportunities). The strategy behind this architecture sought to provide a clear rationale, develop common engineering systems, and centrally execute an ambitious technical program. We argue that the singular focus on the search for life and on the highly ambitious sample return strategy, while well motivated in terms of developing program coherence, forced the program into a non-optimal architecture and caused it to over-reach its means. We will argue that the focused and centralized nature of the program seriously limited its ability to respond to failures or successes; overly strained the program by coupling broad constituencies with a highly ambitious technical approach, and ultimately stifled competition, creativity, and responsiveness as the Announcement of Opportunity (AO) system was abandoned in favor of facility development.
McEwan I. J.
Richardson Mark I.
Vasavada Ashwin R.
No associations
LandOfFree
A Two-Stream Model for the Mars Exploration Program does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with A Two-Stream Model for the Mars Exploration Program, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and A Two-Stream Model for the Mars Exploration Program will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1718389