Why Mars May Be Difficult

An anonymous reader writes with a link to this "dramatic article leading up to the three Mars probes for December/January at NASA's JPL (also hosted at Ames) on Mars risks: Two out of three missions to the red planet have failed. After 300 million miles of deep space, 'One colleague describes the entry, descent and landing as six minutes of terror,' says Dr. Firouz Naderi, manager of the Mars Program Office. Descending at 1,000 miles per hour, with only 100 seconds left at the altitude that a commercial airliner typically flies -- things need to happen in a hurry. Doesn't mention solar flares, electronics shielding, signal snags or budget tightening. The previous account listed the top 10 reasons Mars was hard in 1976."

Comments

Mars Express still on target.

[perly-king-69]

The European Mars Express is still on course for a Christmas Day encounter with Mars.

Re:Mars Express still on target.

[Peter Millerchip]

My understanding of the article is that of all the missions that have ever been launched to Mars since the start of space travel in the 50's, around 66% of them have failed.

I don't think it means that there were three specific missions, and two of these have failed - I just think it means the overall ratio of failures has been fairly high, which means that getting to the surface of Mars safely seems to be a hard problem at the moment.

Re:Mars Express still on target.

[Anonymous Coward]

It has just sent pictures of Mars back.

Pictures From UK's Beagle 2

Re:Maybe it's our solutions?

[Zordak]

way to[o] stressful for delicate equipment.

The cheap electronics you buy at Radio Shack are delicate. Instruments used in space applications are not delicate. Much of what it can survive would kill you.