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The Great Martian Traffic Jam
Kathy Miles writes "Not one, but three space agencies are lining up for Mars launches for June this year. The ESA (European Space Agency) is planning to launch their Mars Express in June for a December landing. NASA has two Mars landers almost ready to go, having fixed a few last minute problems and Japan is launching a Mars Orbiter called Nozomi. The two NASA rovers should arrive in January. Everyone wants to launch around June because Mars will not only be at opposition that month, but nearing a close approach to Earth in August when Mars will be closer to Earth than its been in hundreds of years."
That's what I would have thought. But the article very distinctly says "launch" in reference to Nozomi. It also talks about June. (The arrival of the Nozomi-in-transit is December of this year. Which means the fun won't really begin until 2004.)
Which isn't to say that they might not launch a new one in June, I suppose. NASA didn't wait for Voyager 1 to return science data before launching Voyager 2. (Come to think of it, they didn't wait to LAUNCH Voyager 1 before launching Voyager 2. Ah, the subtlties of spacecraft trajectories and timing.) For that matter, NASA has often had more than one mission to Mars in transit/at Mars. (Hence the back-to-back failures in the fall of 1999.) The Japanese space administration might feel that they've learned enough from the first Nozomi to launch a second one.