>>11878218>Why haven’t we sent a lander to the polesWell if you want to make it last a while, it’ll be expensive. Solar doesn’t work too well over a longer period of time (Phoenix landed “near the poles” and only like like six months). So you need an RTG, which is pretty expensive. Or you can use batteries which are way cheaper but limit your vehicle to a few days of operation.
That being said it’s pretty strange that the poles were neglected. I mean for the cost of Perseverence we could’ve sent three InSights to Mars. Three separate landers. For the cost of one rover. No idea why they didn’t do that instead.
Also NASA is pretty shit with money. They’re spending $100 Million on a mission to kamikaze an Asteroid called DART in order to test asteroid deflection skills. But we already have tested deflection on the Deep Impact mission.
So in the end, it’s expensive to send a lander to Mars’ poles that lasts longer than two weeks, but also NASA is retarded
