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."

Comments

Dammit!

[wowbagger]

To: High command
From: Special agent ngrrt
Re: Human launches toward our home

DAMMIT!

Do you have any IDEA how hard it is going to be for us to make that many launch failures look like accidents?

One or two we can make look like math errors, but this is going to strain even the human's credulity

Sincerely,

ngrrt

A Second Nozomi?

[CheshireCatCO]

Call me confused, but I thought Nozomi was already well en route to Mars, having launched in 1998. (It's taking longer than intended to get there due to some technical difficulty; I think they blew too much propellant early on, but don't quote me on that.) I haven't found anything on a second Nozomi mission with Google. Anyone know anything about this new mission?

Re:A Second Nozomi?

[CheshireCatCO]

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.

DSN priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

It is interesting that this is more than a traffic jam, it is also a communication jam. To my knowledge, all these probes will be tracked by DSN and some of these probes will relay their messages using MGS. Originally these probes were to land with longer periods of time between landings.Delays and other problems created this massive traffic jam and you bet NASA wil favour their own probes. Mitra knows if we will loose any scientific data because of this massive traffic jam. It will be almost impossible to arrange all probes to communnicate with MSG in turns.

DSN is aging and it's not what it used to be but someone (obviously NASA won't) should spend some money on this kind of networks. CCCP used to have a similar network, mostly using marine-based dishes but they are all rotting in their harbours.

Re:DSN priorities

[rk]

The Mars Odyssey Orbiter will also be used as a lander/rover communications relay. The ESA is setting up their own ground stations to stem the tide, relying on the DSN as backup during critical maneuvers. DSN will be busy, but that's nothing new, really.