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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."
Colin Pillinger was one of the originators of the "faster, cheaper, better" way of developing space probes. He had to be, because there's just no way that ESA could follow the NASA model of ever bigger, more expensive projects. I worked in his lab, back when Beagle2 and Cassini were just starting to be talked about. 2003 seemed so far off. It's amazing that it's actually here, and built, and ready to go.
You seem to overlook the fact that all those intelligent people are governed by international bureaucrats :-). Yes, I am a bit cynical about vast and incredibly inefficient agencies like NASA or ESA, but - contrary to you? - I see their history as a history of waste, corruption and bad management, with some occasional sucess stories. It could be the case of "is the glass half-full or rather half-empty", but I wouldn't say that SA has a long history of successful collaboration. I would rather say something quite contrary.
First of all, ESA's history is relatively short. The whole 1960's in Europe is a period of international conflict about European space research. First there was the ESRO (E. Space Research Organization), that was at various stages boycotted by various European states, among them Britain and Italy. Europe managed to develop launcher rockets Europe-1 and Europe-2, that were nothing but technical misunderstanting from the day one, but the old continent could not scrape anything better
Then in the early 1970's ESA was formed from the smoking pile of ashes that was now the remnants of the ESRO. ESA devoted most of its efforts to the creation of a new launcher - Ariane. This is also not exactly what I would call a success story. Every fourth launch of the latest revision of Ariane results in a pictoresque KA-BOOOOOM! And that is after almost 30 years of development!
So yes - I am a cynical about that all, but I think I have damn good reasons for it.
A frugal scientist with twice as much funding may not be any more productive than a frugal scientist with his current budget.
Being a frugal British scientist working on a a tight budget I can tell you that while this may be true in some cases, just taking the stress of being so close to the wire away could mean that some people can get more science done. Heck I just blew the last three weeks writing grant proposals, very little science (or anything else, including sleep) got done during that time. For this I got a PhD?
Al.The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker
Agreed about the tight budget thing though. It would be nice, just for once, to have a budget that allowed me to just buy, for example, extra memory for my computer as and when I needed it.
If I were to move, I'd live in one of the former Russian colonies (Czech Republic would be nice), where they haven't been free long enough to become arrogant, and where American pop culture hasn't penetrated very far.
well i can tell you that you're not going to find what you're looking for. i moved to Saint Petersburg, Russia 3 months ago (born and raised in Calfornia). when i'm in a busy public place, i don't dare utter a single english word in fear that i will be jumped immediately.
hell, even the MacDonalds down the street was broken into and vandalized in protest against the Americans...
George W was here 2 days ago. they limited where he could go outside because of fear of sniper fire...
This may not sound like a big deal, but it can really cut down on the cost
Please remain calm, there is no reason to pani... wait, where are you all going?
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.
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