Homing In On Opportunity From Orbit

An anonymous reader writes "Finding its lander inside a 20-meter crater, NASA has further homed in its latest lander's location and a major science target for the Opportunity rover using high resolution orbital cameras from 400 km overhead. The lander's parachute even casted a shadow nearby this target [another 150 meter crater] during descent. Earlier, each bounce of the Spirit rover could be imaged, along with its backshell, heatshield and parachute debris. Even with dust and weathering, this method could find Pathfinder and Viking [barely], and a technical discussion with pictures is at Malin Space Systems, which designed the Mars Orbital Camera. Because of uncertainties in location, however, it would take 60 years to find the lost Mars Polar Lander, but they may look for Beagle if conditions aren't too dusty."

Comments

Org. Press Release from Nasa

[danalien]

can be found here: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressrelea ses/20040125c.html

btw, I like this excerpt, about the 'Spirit' lander:

>Encouraging developments continued for Opportunity's twin, Spirit, too. Engineers have determined that Spirit's flash memory
>hardware is functional,strengthening a theory that Spirit's main problem is in software that controls file management of the memory.
>"I think we've got a patient that's well on the way to recovery," said Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager Pete Theisinger at NASA's
>Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

...don't they kinda wished that they ran linux on it?
and if it where buggy, they'd at least have a patch within a couple of hours ;-)

Re:Why is the US able to do these things so well?

[dhaines]

successful mission upon successful mission

No.