I started this blog in October 2008 thinking that a few people probably had some interest in the planning of future planetary missions. Tonight, I ran the stats and discovered that from Christmas 2008 to Christmas 2009, this site had 11,730 unique visitors, far more than I had expected. (It's hard to tell how many of those people continue to follow the blog after the first visit. Many people follow blogs via readers, which are invisible to the tools that follow site hits.)
I want to thank everyone who have taken the time to follow these postings. The coming year promises to be an interesting one as the Decadal Survey makes its recommendations for the coming decade.
Thanks for the excellent blog. (I follow via Google Reader.)
ReplyDeleteI visit this site every day looking for updates. Thank you for providing an extremely valuable service. Keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteNow if only the Decadal Survey could recommend an expedited mission to Europa -- 2027 is horrendously far off. I'd like to see a scaled down version of the current flagship plan, something that would get there by 2017.
I just don't understand why this world is not given more attention. Of all the worlds in our solar system, it has the greatest chance of supporting some form of life beneath the icy surface. In my book, that elevates Europa to the number 1 position on the mission stack.
Look for a post next week on alternative missions to explore Europa.
ReplyDeleteAs a graduate student in this field, I find that you have many insightful posts and many times are the first place I will hear abut new planetary exploration related news. Thanks for a great blog, and I hope you continue!
ReplyDeleteTake care with the funding cuts.
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