Patrick Stakem

Mars Patrick Stakem

Missions to Mars and beyond and beyond are lengthy and expensive. We need to ensure that we are delivering payloads that will function and return new data. The trade off is between one or two large traditional spacecraft, and a new concept, a large number of nearly identical small spacecraft, operating cooperatively. Necessarily, the Technology Readiness Level of this approach must be proven in Earth orbit, before the resources are allocated to deploy this approach to distant locations. Decades of time, and hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake.