What will the practical payoff be for the average person?
TERRIERS is designed to do basic research into the structure and dynamics of the upper atmosphere. In the most limited sense it will have little short term effect on the day to day life of the average person. The payoff for TERRIERS is more long term. TERRIERS is part of the STEDI program, a forerunner to the current UnEx program. The goals of that program are to demonstrate that valuable science can be delivered by lower cost spacecraft than have been flown in the past. The TERRIERS spacecraft was built and will be operated for under $5 million (excluding launch). By contrast, the next smallest NASA satellites are the SmEx missions which cost about $50 million. The most expensive NASA missions range up to several billion dollars and high end military missions cost even more. The STEDI project in general and the TERRIERS mission in specific are an attempt to lower the cost of doing business in space. In a more direct sense our primary goal is to bring new tomographic techniques to bear
