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Japanese Mars Probe Failing
Anonymous Coward writes "After months of silence and a week of hopeful half-truths, Japanese space officials have finally confirmed that their Mars-bound Nozomi probe is teetering on the brink of failure in its five-year quest to explore the Red Planet. The Nozomi orbiter is one of four spacecraft that are due to converge on Mars in the next two months. The other three probes -- the European Space Agency's Mars Express and NASA's two Mars Exploration Rovers -- are still on track and in good working order, according to the latest status reports. Mars Express is due to enter Martian orbit on Christmas Day and send a British-built Beagle 2 lander to the surface, while the NASA rovers should arrive on Jan. 3 and Jan. 24."
...will it commit harakiri?
Hack your mind out of its sandbox.
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
From the article:
Friday's JAXA statement denied one Tokyo press report that probe was doomed to impact Mars and possibly contaminate the planet. Such a scenario would violate an international "space quarantine" treaty.
I know we've had a lot of cool reports that microbes have survived exposure to hard vacuum for extended periods, but do we really have to worry about "contaminating" Mars? The craft was probably sterilized pretty well before being launched. Then, a year and a half ago, it got hit with a solar flare strong enough to make it miss Mars the first time... that should have baked any hitchiking bugs pretty well. And then, there's the latest round of Solar hiccups to take into account.
Finally, if the craft does hit Mars, it's going to do it in a totally uncontrolled manner -- 'cause if they get any control, they'll steer it away. That implies a high velocity, which even in the thin Martian atmosphere should melt the craft into slag.
Extremophile bacteria at molten sulfur vents is one thing, but hitchiking in a blob of ablating steel?
And as far as that "space quarantine" treaty... what exactly is the punishment for sneezing in space?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Pity - the more craft we send there, the more we'll all learn.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
So hopefully the British rover will have tea ready for us when we get there. Jolly good.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
if its martians shooting them down... martians suck! these things take 5 years to get there! the hit like one out of 10 things we send! who can't aim well enough to hit something when you have 5 years to try?
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
Everything we send to Mars disappears. Im starting to get scared...
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
I keep thinking about those fish that live in caves that we believed were blind from birth, but were actually blinded by our observations, which required orders of magnitude of light more than they were ever accustomed to. Who knows how much Earth biology survives in these probes when they crash land?
Maybe we should put a halt to sending out any more of these things for now and work more on passive observation techniques.
Or maybe Mars is a long way away and it's really hard to build a machine that can be expected to work for months on end whilst being baked and simultaneously frozen after being placed in a vacuum and bombarded with radiation. Then to put this complicated device on top of hundreds of tonnes of high explosive so that you can get it moving fifteen times faster than a rifle bullet with the objective of placing it somewhere near a body only slightly larger than the Moon?
Best wishes,
Mike.
At least there's quite a bit of redundancy with the martian probes. With four going there at once it's quite likely that at least one of them will get there.
The martian probe success rate is so bad that maybe space agencies should launch multiple smaller ones with the expectancy that some will fail to reach their destination than put all their hopes on one larger probe.
Two points:
...and why, yes, this is rocket science.
1. If you even know who Art Bell is, then you listen too much.
2. Mars is a very long way away. A Very, Very long way away. It's moving, too, at a good clip. This distance allows more to go wrong on the way than going somewhere closer, like the moon, by an exponential factor.
(One more reason why Mars is no place to raise a kid. Ooooo, I'm channeling Shatner!)
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
If someone sterilized the bird with something like chlorine monoxide it's a different matter, but I've seen nothing about this and an orbiter wouldn't normally need to be sterilized like a lander. That's why Galileo met its fiery end.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
When will we stop sending probes and start sending missiles?!!
If Mars Express fails to shoot Beagle 2 into space, the retro-engine will not have enough thrust to brake Mars Express into Martian orbit. Both probes would then fly past the planet and into solar orbit.
Beagle 2 then travels through space for six days before hitting the Martian atmosphere at interplanetary velocity. Beagle 2's onboard transmitter will not come to life until the probe impacts the surface, so you can imagine that those six days will be pretty tense for the ESA teams.
All being well, Beagle 2 and Mars Express should arrive at their destinations safe and well in the small hours of Christmas morning. By the time we're opening our presents here in the UK, they should have received a signal from the Martian surface.
So, here's hoping!
Best wishes,
Mike.
it's not like this is brain surgery!
[off to the brain surgery forum... "c'mon guys...it's not like this is rocket science!"]
Does anyone have any hard data on the statistics of spacecraft survival for all known Mars missions? Am I incorrect?
This is going to be the best episode of Batttlebots ever!
Doc: No wonder this circuit failed. It says "Made in Japan".
Marty McFly: What do you mean, Doc? All the best stuff is made in Japan.
Doc: Unbelievable.
Because it's a Nozomi Express Probe, I can't use my JRPass on it!
They should have launched a Hikari first.
sulli
RTFJ.
Do realize that this probe already went around Mars and back to Earth. It's pretty amazing that the thing has been functioning all this time.
"The absurd is clear reasoning recognizing its limits"
-Albert Camus
Not to mention that no one really has the funds to build the super-probes of yesteryear, so this is unfortunately going to happen with greater frequency. Even looking back at the historic Mars missions where the US sent those super-probes, two out of eight failed before reaching Mars. This shows us that it really has nothing to do with Mars, it's a difficult feat to send probes to Mars even with gobs of cash to spend, and it is no less difficult now than it was decades ago.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
probe that lasts longer than several hundred lightyears.
I'm not sure if you're trolling here or you're just misguided...
1) Light year is an unit of distance, not time, so no "last longer than" but "go further than".
2) It's helluva much too - distance it takes one year for light to travel. There's 3 light seconds from Earth to Moon, 7 light minutes to the Sun, about one light hour to Neptune, four light years to Proxima Centauri, nearest star. Mars is at worst several light minutes away from Earth - when it's on the opposite side of the Sun. Building a probe that would stand several hundred lightyears, traveling at speed near to light, would be pretty hard... it would take several hundred years for it to get to its destination and it would probably be hit by numerous micrometeorites in the meantime. And E=(Mv^2)/2, in this case E=(Mc^2)/2 so energy of one micrometeorite hitting the probe would be half the energy of its nuclear annihilation. Enough to evaporate a serious starship.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
The European 'Mars Express' probe has a budget of 150 000 000 euros.
I guess I'll just stick with their VCR's and TV's.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
But do we need any solution? After all, any manned expedition will surely affect Mars more than any probe before. Exploring Mars and fear of contamination are contradictory. There is a saying in Russia, if you are affraid of wolves, then dont explore the forest, meaning that if you want to explore something, you have to overcome your trivial fears.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
There was an article about microwave bombs earlier. Could a narrowband (laser type microwave) deliver power to a sattelite that far out? (The article mentions it's the power system failing)
Shouldn't that be "five-year mission"? This is space, after all. The final frontier.
come on, guys -- it doesn't take a rocket scientist to.... uh..... nevermind.
A rare eloquence, a marvelous economy of words; concise, yet expressive; direct, accessible language equally meaningful to the sage and to the barbarian. Moronic, perhaps, yet clear and precise.
Or maybe Mars is a long way away and it's really hard to build a machine that can be expected to work for months on end whilst being baked and simultaneously frozen after being placed in a vacuum and bombarded with radiation...
Which leads me to think that it's a good thing we're not trying very hard to mount any manned missions to Mars in the near future. If mankind has so much difficulty getting a relatively small, unmanned probe into Martian orbit/onto Martian soil, think about how much harder it would be with a vastly larger craft that needs to keep complex life-support systems in running order the whole time, and then make a safe return trip.
I know there are a lot of Slashdot readers who think we should be all gung-ho about exploring the Solar System, and that we should be willing to accept the much higher risk that goes along with such exploration, but it's starting to look like the odds of such a mission achieving the goals of taking men to Mars and returning them safely to Earth would be pretty slim. I don't think society is prepared to wager billions of dollars not to mention human lives on a venture with a 10% chance of success. Unless we discover that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are holed up on Mars with a big stockpile of WMD, that is.
1. Orbiters are generally not sanitized to the level that landers are, so there is a higher chance of viable organisms on the Jap probe.
2. I don't know about Japanese orbital policy, but NASA policy requires that probes be launched on an orbit that will cause it to slightly miss it's target.... then when it's almost at the planet the orbital bias is removed so that orbital insertion takes place. So if this were a NASA mission there wouldn't be contaimination if the probe died... it'd just happily whizz on by into a solar orbit.
--Rob
I live in Japan and have been hearing frequently deceptive information made by japanese organizations. I am starting to believe that, for some reason, the japanese have a real problem with truth and reality.
Recently there have been serious problems with radioactive leakage at nuclear reactors and the japanese companies responsible did initially lie to the public (and the government) about the real situation.
The japanese economy is going through a serious recession and one of the problems is the false statements made from the financial organizations.
Statistics about social trends and problems are dubituous, not to say manipulated. e.g., AIDS statistics.
Discrimination and human rights violations are common, yet the reality is covered by the local news and authorities.
Double standard and unclear laws, even for the japanese themselves, are quite common.
Due to things like these and some others, I have been loosing respect and trust for the japanese, both at a personal and professional level.
Ignore the conspiracy theory nutjobs blaming aliens for damaging the Japanese probe. There probably is something wrong (as in intentionally untrue) about this story but there is a simpler and more human explanation for it. If JAXA's version of events is correct, this is the third space vehicle they've had die recently because of solar flares. (See http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/031031090646.2kxsn
They lost Midori-2 and Kodama in October, both supposedly due to solar flares. According to a friend who works on the Midori program, they really don't know what went wrong. The power started fading and over the course of several hours, went from about 6Kw of power to 1Kw. If a solar flare killed Midori-2, the power should have dumped quickly. Despite not knowing why it died, they blamed solar flares. My guess is that flares got the blame because that way, it is nobody's fault. Given how unforthcoming JAXA has been about Nozumi, I would not take their explanation of Nozumi's problems at face value unless they also release credible data showing cause and effect.