Mars Rovers On Final Approach

leapis writes "In the wake of the possible loss of the Beagle 2 Mars probe, let us not forget that the Mars Rovers are scheduled for arrival in orbit this weekend. As noted in this article at Space.com, the fourth and final course correction has been made, and Spirit, the first of two spacecraft, will touch down around 22:34 on 3 Jan 2004. More information and a countdown to the landing can be found here."

Comments

Celestia add-on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know if it's possible to get accurate data from these recent Mars Probes into the Celestia 3d space simulator?

I would love to watch with my son as these craft approach and land on Mars in real time! Currently, we enjoy doing fly-bys between Mars' and moons, the ISS and Hubble, and the stars, but this would be more memorable than watching videobites after the fact on CNN. TIA.

They won't be in ORBIT at all.

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

...let us not forget that the Mars Rovers are scheduled for arrival in orbit this weekend.

Erm, they aren't going to arrive in ORBIT at all. They're simply going to smash straight into Mars's atmosphere without trying to orbit first. Why spend the energy (and thus propellant mass) firing engines to orbit the planet when you actually just want to GET ON THE PLANET? Mars has a thin-but-functional atmosphere that you can use to slow yourself down so you drop for a nice landing. ^_^

Re:Question

[thanasakis]

I was under the impression that there are so many probes this time because Earth and Mars came very very close last summer. Their relative position was probably favorable for plotting an easy trajectory to mars.

I could be wrong though. Could someone plz verufy this?

Re:Question

[Aglassis]

You said "It does seem that they would have been better off waiting for the MGS imagery before actually landing... ;-)

Sometimes even the most obvious things are only clear with hindsight."

This may not have been possible. Three points:
1) Mars Express was designed before the Beagle 2 was agreed to be attached. Since it had to do a correction after entering orbit to make its orbit a polar orbit, it probably wouldn't have had enough fuel to do so with the Beagle 2 still attached.
2) Since the landing area is an ellipse with the major axis parallel to the direction the craft is moving, a polar insertion would probably be unacceptable for the landing area.
3) Additional fuel would be required to decelerate the Beagle 2 out of polar orbit

Obviously since the Beagle was a late 100 kg addition, the idea of adding additional fuel is impossible due to the weight constraints. You can always wait for additional information before you attempt to land your spacecraft, but by then it might be year 3000 and the argument would be over whether the new 1 mm resolution camera is accurate enough to land a spacecraft.