NASA ends MAVEN mission
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What is not controversial is that NASA needs a new spacecraft capable of relaying communications from Mars to Earth. NASA’s best communications relay today is the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has now been there for 20 years. It’s a great spacecraft, but it’s getting long in the tooth.
If you were to stand on the surface of Mars in two years and look up to the night sky, you might see a bright streak flying across the heavens, followed a few minutes later by another. Rather than flecks of space stuff, they would be satellites on a ...