NASA has delayed the launching of a mission to Mars by two years, to 2013, because of an undisclosed conflict of interest involved in one of two final proposals, officials said on Friday.
Postponing the Mars Scout program mission means that NASA will miss an opportunity to launch a flight to Mars for the first time in more than a decade, Doug McCuistion, director of the agency's Mars Exploration Program, said at a news conference.
Mars and Earth only get close enough to efficiently launch explorations every 26 months.
After reducing 26 mission proposals to two and entering an evaluation period this fall to select a winner, McCuistion said an unspecified conflict of interest arose concerning one proposal and the assessment group.
Resolving the conflict, the nature of which McCuistion said he could not discuss, required disbanding the review panel and forming a new one.
This process, he said, in setting back a selection by at least four months, meant that keeping to the original launch date would put undue cost and schedule pressure on the winner.
"Delaying the next Scout mission is allowing the mission planning teams to replan their proposed missions," he said. "It will also reduce the risk of cost overruns driven by the tight mission schedule."
The teams, one at the University of Colorado and the other from the Southwest Research Institute branch in Boulder, Colorado, have until August to submit their new proposals. NASA will make a final selection in December.
Both groups are proposing similar spacecraft to orbit Mars and study why the planet's thin atmosphere is escaping into space. The five-year, US$475 million mission is part of the Scout program to send missions with relatively modest costs to regularly explore Mars. McCuistion said the delay could add as much as US$40 million to the cost of the mission.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS