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Mars Express launch today
mikerich writes "The European Space Agency and the Russian Space Agency will launch the Mars Express spaceprobe today using a Soyuz-Fregat out of Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Launch is scheduled for 17.45 UT (18.45 BST), so far all preparations have gone smoothly and the forecast is excellent.
The launch will be streamed over the Web by ESA.
Mars Express consists of two components, a large Martian orbiter which will be searching for sub-surface water and studying the Martian atmosphere. Its seven science packages have been built by teams from Europe, Russia, the United States, Japan, and China. Amongst the science packages is a radar for studying geological structures. Mars Express will map most of the planet in high-resolution colour stereoscopic 3D and perform a high-resolution mineralogical survey of the planet.
Mars Express is also carrying the tiny Beagle 2 lander designed by a team led by Professor Colin Pillinger of the Open University. Beagle 2 is Britain's first planetary space probe and designed specifically to look for life using the most advanced techniques currently available.
For those in the UK, the story of Beagle 2 is being told on BBC 2 on Monday 2nd June at 23:20."
Dan B. writes "The BBC is running an article on the European 'Mars Express', Europe's first interplanetary rocket. This is the first of three probes heading to the Red Planet this Summer, as it nears it's closest point from the Earth in thousands of years."
That's so 1976...
Je t'aime Stéphanie
I wish the Beagle 2 in particular the very best of luck. Britain has never really pulled its weight in ESA, leaving France, Germany and Italy to pay for most things; a successful Mars lander bearing the Union flag could well change all that. Mars Express as a whole was done on a small budget, and Beagle was hacked together from the money that could be found down the back of the national sofa; if they succeed, imagine what could be achieved with some _real_ money...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Let's hope the ESA engineers haven't been barkin' up the wrong tree.
Beagle 2 is Britain's first planetary space probe and designed specifically to look for life using the most advanced techniques currently available.
In the best British tradition the probe will lay out a tea set and some cucumber sandwiches to attract alien lifeforms.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
...to hearing Tom Brokaw proudly state that "Nasa has just sent a probe to Uranus!"
Not sure if this is a good idea in regards to future slashdotting, but there is going to be a webcam showing the proceedings.
...to hearing Tom Brokaw proudly state that "Nasa has just sent a probe to Uranus!"
Prior to this, the name Uranus will be changed to Urectum.
I was going to watch the launching from the ESA site.... /. I may simply forgot about it:-/
Now with the link to the streaming page published on
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
One of the recent Mars probes was lost due to a simple math error in metric/Anglosaxon unit conversion. That was NASA's blunder. I wonder what sort of blunders will result from this British/ESA/Russian/Japanese/American/Whatever cooperation...
This is the first of three probes heading to the Red Planet this Summer, as it nears it's closest point from the Earth in thousands of years
People of Earth, hear us. We, the people of mars, grow tired of your repetetive probings!
You must cease and desist with this probing, especially with one named after a dog. (We've watched what your dogs do on your planet, and have no wish to undergo the same "leg" treatment.)
And you must stop this photography of our martian mounds. This blatant harrassment will only lead to a hostile relationship between us.
Perhaps with some beating, and bondage thrown in...
krystal_blade... No martians were harmed during the posting of this comment....
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
It is now 13:05 CEST.
So what the hell are you talking about?
"Son, in a sporting event, it's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get" - Homer J. Simpson
One way tickets start at 2,000,000,000 Euros. Get them while they last.
"Much work is lost, for the lack of a little more." -Edward H. Harriman
In addition to these missions, also keep an eye on the NASA/ESA Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan, arriving later this year, as well as ESA's SMART-1 mission to the moon to be launched soon. Future plans include NASA's Mercury Messenger, and ESA's Venus Express and Bepi-Columbo.
Good but why do you say that.
Flamebait i guess.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
Reception frequency: 10832 MHz
Polarisation: Horizontal
Symbol rate: 22 Msymb/s
FEC: 5/6
Service ID: 61950
Service name: ESA
TXT: none
Start of launch transmission: 19:15 CEST (17:15 GMT/UT)
Martian Overlord: What happen? .... Bzzzt Chirp!
Engineering Drone: Somebody set up us three probes.
Signals Drone: We get signal.
Martian Overlord: What!
Signals Drone: Main screen turn on.
Martian Overlord: It's You !!
Beagle: How are you gentlemen !!
Beagle: All your base are belong to us probes.
Beagle: You are on the way to destruction.
Martian Overlord: What you say !!
Beagle: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Beagle: HA HA HA HA
Martian Overlord: Take off every 'zig'!!
Martian Overlord: You know what you doing.
Martian Overlord: Move 'zig'.
Martian Overlord: For great justice.
krystal_blade
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
I'm serious here.
I know many of you hate us, and have even wished us ill-will recently, but rest assured, I don't hate you, and I wish you the best of luck in this endeavor.
New York, out...
Not content with screwing up our atmospehere with junk, mankind once again shows his inate ability to devistate the natural unblemished landscape of other worlds.
;))
Scientists should think about the consequences of their actions, and give as much thought to the cleanup operation as to the getting there. (Sounds a little like programmers and documentation
liqbase
Actually, Cassini will enter Saturn's orbit on July 1, 2004.
Actually, the reason why Mars Express is being launched was the fact the highly ambitious Mars 96 probe (which carried many of the same experiments that Mars Express carries) failed due to a rocket booster upper stage failure.
This is why Mars Express is a much smaller spacecraft, small enough to rely on the well-proven launch rocket that carries the Soyuz spacecraft to orbit.
Quote: "using a Soyuz-Fregat out of Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan"
They've obviously encrypted the name of the equipment and launch location,
could this be due to the tired old parole of "national security"?
...but only if you are a part of the "adminstration" that uses americans tax-money to play Chingiz Khan in the middle east.
Why is it, the only time everyone in this world gets along, is when we're doing something outside of our own planet? Maybe the colonize another planet will we achieve world peace.
I was not going to enter this pan global slanging match but i have decided to lay down my 2 cents worth (or euros or pence or whatever)
The Europeans are as bad as the Americans except they dont get on the high horse about unlike the post that this is attached to....
it is also unfair to compare schroeder to bush, the reasons why the europeans hate bush is he is a war mongering idiot that could not outwit a yoghurt, but for the same reason people hate blair becuase he is a sycophantic war mongering manipulative little tit who generally goes against the wishes of the people that voted him in.
The idea that Euro's hate US is the stupid, almost as stupid as US hating Euro's, the only differnce is americans take it too heart too easily and euro's keep on going on and and on about.
all sides, shut up sit down admit every population has its faults (im my case spellin) and either lighten up or go to a slightly less intellectual web site to spout your zenophobic bollocks.
While off topic i would like to bring it back straight on line and say, yeeee! mars the more info the better
S
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
Why didnt the ESA use their own Ariane rocket?
I didn't know this at first, so I thought it might help. The launch time is 12:15 pm in EST. Very soon now.
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
> The launch will be streamed^M^M^M^M^M^M^M^Mslashdotted over the Web by ESA
---
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Must-not-watch TV!
Translation: "Our Secret Soviet Weather control machine is working perfectly. Now, where are Moose and Squirrel?"
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
It's amazing what all these first world countries can do. Wish my country was still in the space business.
Regarding our announcer: It's good to see that the Swedish Chef has gotten work since his Muppet days. (Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shut up.)
Seriously, though, I am overjoyed to see this. If all goes well over the next few months/years, it's only going to get more exciting.
Good luck to the venture and everyone involved with it.
You're getting it all wrong... Just like racial humor, it is only acceptable if the person making the joke falls into the category of people the joke is about. Therefore, only Americans can joke about America,and only the British can joke about Britain. Otherwise, people will be up in arms over it.
looks like the site for the video feed was slashdotted at T minus 1:30 :(
Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps. -- Emo Phillips
The launch went fine. MEx is in Earth orbit. The first major maneuver will be at 20:15 GMT/UT.
One notable cock-up was the UK's ITN news channel which had been advertising it's live coverage of the launch all day and just as it happened it cut to a commerical break. Professional journalism indeed. Fortunately the other stations also covered it.
..many people that tried to watch this ... I got sound and some pictures in between.. =/
Well Best of luck to ESA. I myself is from Sweden so I really hope this will work out fine.
I really HAD another userid
The ESA website states that "Beagle 2 will land in an equatorial region that was probably flooded in the past, and where traces of life may have been preserved."
What I wonder is how likely these areas actually were flooded.
I know they say there is a fair amount of forzen water on mars but other than that and the fact it "looks" like surface shaped by water, do they have any other proof of this? I am not trying to say that there were no oceans, im just wondering how they came up with "probably". I thought the scientists used the term "possibly" when talking about water on mars?
True ravers don't need drugs
The link for Soyuz-Fregat ist /. :)
http://www.orbireport.com/Launchers/Soyuz_U-Frega
Interestingly enough, it's a new generation of launchers (well, an incremental upgrade
that IIRC were first used in 2000.
-DVK
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
They are running replays of the launch for those interested.
Seems less slashdotted right now.
I really HAD another userid
Drivel. Why is natural good? Disease is natural, old age is natural, dinosaur killing asteroids are natural, eating your offspring is natural. Any intelligent spacefaring species worth its salt would consider primitive spaceprobes cute and worthy of a pat on the head. As for the "scientists should think" remark, tell me I had a sense of humour failure and you're trolling, because the alternative doesn't bear thinking about.
on first round in 2002, a slightly higher score than what his party usually gets.
What shocked the other 83%, as well as many of Le Pen supporters themselves, is the fact that it was the second highest score behind Chirac (19.9%), thus qualifiyng him for the second round against Chirac.
The reason for this was the unusually high number of candidates: sixteen. Second round came out 18% for Le Pen and 82% for Chirac (results)
I think that unlike Austria, this doesn't qualify for "almost". Goes to say that the US is not the only country to have a twisted election system.
Textbook launch - well, that's what you expect from Soyuz - and now the departure from Earth orbit has succeeded as well.
Fingers crossed. Hopefully there will be some wide smiles round about Christmas this year when we hear that "The Beagle has landed". (No offense whatever intended to the US lunar program: I saw the tv broadcasts of the first landing in the early hours of the morning when I was still at university.)
I hope there are still some people reading, but not enough to slashdot this site. I was mooching around the Beagle 2 mission site and found a link to Starsem, the Russian company that provided the launcher. They have the user manual for the Soyuz-Fregat launcher online!! How cool is that? Caution, it's an 8MB download.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Soyuz has the Fregat.
Best wishes,
Mike.
At least I thought the joke was funny..
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me