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Rainbowdelights t1_iu3cjm5 wrote

Reply to comment by gribblefrit in NASA spacecraft records epic ‘marsquakes’ as it prepares to die by marketrent

A counter argument to this is the billions of dollars spent to land this thing and do all the rest, could completely mitigate this cause of failure through the addition of a few relatively inexpensive parts

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BirdOfSteel t1_iu3dr9a wrote

Spacecraft engineers would love nothing more than to implement all the features they will/might need if they could afford it. When your budget is determined by the government, ya take what you can get

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Throwaway_97534 t1_iu47auh wrote

But when almost every successful lander is limited by their solar panels at the end of the project, at what point do you start prioritizing them?

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BirdOfSteel t1_iu49qny wrote

I'd say you'd need to start spending more time/money on solar panels if the of one really needs it to function. So far, probes seem to be getting by fine with the current panels we put on them so there isn't too much pressure to be focusing on solar panels if they're doing the job well enough.

I think someone else also mentioned this, but adding things like wipers and whatnot would also increase weight. That's weight which could be dedicated to other important parts of the craft. Yes, you'd end up collecting more power and perhaps you'd maintain your solar cells better than before if you cleaned them, but it would take research and development on something that already works well enough.

That said, solar is something that's useful down here on the ground too, so I imagine that takes some pressure off of space agencies develop the tech from the ground up.

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Star_king12 t1_iu3ftjl wrote

Anything you send to Mars is excruciatingly expensive.

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