The whole hover and look around thing was super impressive to me. That choice to spend mass on fuel for such maneuvers vs science instruments seems to always go to science in NASA debates and we end up with "either it will land here, or it will die." :-)
Great outcome and I look forward to the pictures sent back by the rover!
A very large number of missions to other planets have failed because they crashed on the planet. Thus anyone who is serious about getting a mission to a different planet will put a lot of effort into the landing system. The fuel burn is cheap compared to a crash landing on the moon (as Russia just had a couple days ago). The above is even at NASA, they have done a lot of complex landing systems over the years.
Most missions have several different scientific systems on board. If any one fails well the others still make the mission a partial success. If the landing system fails they all become a failure.
Just checking in here, did you find something in my writing that suggested I was being disparaging or dismissive of what an awesome accomplishment this is? If so would love to know how you got there so that I could be more clear in the future.
To neutral readers, it appears complementary — not contradictory. It adds more info about the cost of failure when trying to optimize for more science.
If you can't see it that way, try picturing the reply prefixed as "to add to that, ..."
My impression is you were trying to say too much effort and fuel was used for landing and they should have put a bit more into science. If that isn't what you meant, my mistake, but it is how I understood it.
Thanks! That helps a lot. It was not what I meant but re-reading it I can see how you got that impression. I find the orbital entry/landing phases of exploratory missions to be the most interesting technically as they always have bunch of technical challenges with engineers making trade-offs. The "sky crane" idea NASA came up with blew me away (as an example). I think the ISRO team really did a fabulous job on the landing here. Watching the numbers touch down was so delicate.
Great outcome and I look forward to the pictures sent back by the rover!