What’s in a (Mars robot’s) name? - February 11, 2008
The BBC seems to have spotted something missed by the rest of the media world: the European Space Agency wants to rename its planned Mars rover.
Currently the rover – scheduled for launch in 2013 – is called ExoMars. However Jean Jacques Dordain, ESA chief, thinks a new moniker is called for and he’s asking his agency to come up with one.
A major reason for this seems to be that the rover is going to be much more expensive that originally planned. The BBC says Dordain will ask European ministers to nearly double its 650 million euro budget.
“In 2005, it was mostly a technological mission with some scientific passengers,” he says. “...Now we have a scientific mission as much as a technological mission, meaning that the ExoMars 2008 is heavier, is more complex and is more costly.”
Apparently he thinks a new name will make it more likely the ministers will say yes to a bigger budget.
“I am asking [my officials] to find a different way to define ExoMars because if we say ‘this is ExoMars’, for most of the ministers it means ‘over-cost’,” he says. “And this is not over-cost because we are not speaking at all of the same mission; it is a completely different mission. This is to try to make ministers understand that this is not over-cost.”
This sounds like a perfectly reasonable plan to me. As a name suggestion, ExoMarsTwo would nicely sum up both the project and its new budget...
Image: ExoMars rover concept / ESA