On Episode 130 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik talk with Dr. Jim Bell about the Mars Sample Return program and VIPER mission to the moon.
NASA's planetary exploration program is in trouble. The Mars Sample Return program is verging on cancellation, and the VIPER mission to the moon already has been. Both are critical precursors to human exploration of these places, as Dr. Jim Bell of Arizona State University will tell us.
We need to know more about the surface of Mars -- with direct, in-the-lab studies of Mars rocks - -and we certainly need to understand where the volatiles -- another name for water and other resources of value -- are on the moon. And, if you're the US government, you'd like to do both before China does -- which is likely not far off.
