Quote Originally Posted by duke79 View Post
Yea, I was just being facetious...but it DOES seem like a lot of money for a "drone" with a cheap camera attached to it. Sort of like the $10,000 toilet seats that the Air Force had bought for some of its planes.
Well, probably a few special factors here that a drone and GoPro couldn't handle:
1) Need to handle those extremely cold nights on Mars and turn on again.
2) Drone propellers are probably not made for 1/100 of earth atmosphere
3) Would need considerable weight/geometry re-engineering to fit under/on Percy (and in original spacecraft) to travel in space, land, and then deploy
4) Need a place to put that Wright Brother's artifact that they carried up there. Attaching to the outside with a piece of NASA space tape is too risky don't you think?

I think there is a low bar for the mission to be a success. But high functionality available, gives the potential for a high ceiling to make this incredibly informative for future missions.

Larry
DevilHorse