Where were you when Spirit and Opportunity, NASA's Mars ExplorationrnRovers, first stepped out onto the surface of the red planet?rnIt might not be quite as memorable as Neil Armstrong's moon landing, yet with NASA's shrinking budget and plans to scrub both the space shuttle and the space station, the ability of human space travel-at least in the foreseeable financial future-seem to have hit a bump in the road. A blue-ribbon panel recently recommended that NASA table quickly returning man to the moon, concluding that current programs are behind schedule and significantly under budgeted.rnWith pricey human missions mostly on the backburner, some see this as an opportunity for Houston to send out the robots, whose missions come at a fraction of the cost.
展开▼
