It Takes Humans AND Robots

So what's the big deal about Mars InSight?, Sean O'Keefe, OpEd, The Hill

"The late, great courageous explorer Neil Armstrong once described his experience listening to a team of lunar scientists debate whether the Apollo 11 mission would result in a one-way trip to the Moon. The fear was the legs of the lunar lander module Eagle would be subject to a magnetic reaction such that significant volumes of lunar dust would adhere to the lander's legs adding so much weight that Eagle would be incapable of taking off to rejoin the command module Columbia circling the Moon and make the trip back to Earth safely. After several days of witnessing the endless debate, Armstrong told the lunar experts that he'd let them know how it turned out when he got back. The upshot of that story was that we knew only a fraction of what we wanted to know before accelerating the Apollo program more than 50 years ago."

from NASA Watch https://ift.tt/2Q7kPfU
via IFTTT