Spacecraft Quotations

NASA wanted to assure its ability to examine the spacecraft in orbit for signs of damage.

Unfortunately, recovering from something like a reset is a slow, lengthy process. You don't know what caused the problem, and the immediate concern is that whatever triggered it will do it again next time you try it. The thing you have to do is fire up each of the rover's capabilities one at a time, checking each one carefully and individually to see whether it would cause another reset or not. Standard spacecraft troubleshooting practicebut it takes time.

This spacecraft will return more data than all previous Mars missions combined.

This spacecraft is going to rewrite the science textbooks on Mars.

This spacecraft is a comet explorer. It has the tools to do a lot more.

This spacecraft and systems will build upon the foundation of the proven designs and technologies used in the Apollo and space shuttle programs, while having far greater capability.

It's been marching along on its own all weekend long and we aren't going to do anything more to the spacecraft unless, in the very unlikely event that something goes wrong.

We would like to have students and other engineers exercise and operate the spacecraft after the biology has been completed for at least some of that time. Of course, if a critical system were to fail or wear out, like the batteries or communications radio, then that's it since we do not have a lot of redundancy in the design.

To try to really land a spacecraft really on another world is really difficult, and if we lose that ability, it's going to be heartbreaking.

The Orion capsule uses an escape system quite like that of the Apollo spacecraft in the 1960s and 70s: an 'escape tower' containing a solid-fuel rocket that will pull it up and away from Ares I in a pinch.