Science: NASA has announced a major change to its Discovery Program, which solicits planetary science mission proposals: Foreign instrument contributions are now limited to one-third the cost of the US instruments. The change came about because of the 2016 InSight robotic lander mission to Mars, whose two main science instruments consist of a French-built seismometer and a German-built heat probe. Besides the fact that the American scientific instrument community was not happy with that decision, the difficulty in ensuring timely instrument delivery and data sharing when working with foreign entities were also cited. However, Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator for InSight, defended his choice; he said that selecting the best instruments should be the most important criterion.
