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Next Mars Mission Will Look for Landing Sites

Posted by michael on from the beachhead dept.

fenimor writes "NASA's next mission to Mars to be launched on Aug. 10, 2005 - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter - will examine potential landing sites and provide a high-data-rate communications relay for for future surface missions. Weighing 2,180 kilograms, the spacecraft will be the largest ever to orbit Mars and with the largest telescopic camera ever sent into orbit around another planet, will reveal Mars surface features as small as a kitchen table."

31 comments

  1. Yea! by Reducer2001 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Hurray! On step closer to getting off this wet rock.

    --
    When you get to hell -- tell 'em Itchy sent ya!
  2. Kitchen tables!! by wakejagr · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wait, there are kitchen tables on Mars? WTF? Isn't *that* proof of life?!?!?

    --
    Don't save Windows XP! http://www.petitiononline.com/jjw1xp/petition.html
    1. Re:Kitchen tables!! by Max+von+H. · · Score: 5, Funny

      Congrats, you just made me spill beer!

      Don't you just love all those funky measurement units americans spew in press releases? Volkswagens (haven't seen one in ages, how big is it again?), Rhode Island, Libraries of Congress and now freakin' kitchen tables. What's next, chevettes, twinkies, W's IQ (only for negative values)?

      come_ON_!

      --
      -- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
    2. Re:Kitchen tables!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I forget who made the observation (probably Gallagher, I always end up quoting freaking Gallagher) that men compare the sizes of objects to sports equipment, while women use fruit.

    3. Re:Kitchen tables!! by cephyn · · Score: 1

      hmm, well a kitchen table is definitely not a fruit, so i guess its sports equipment! go men!

      --
      Moo.
    4. Re:Kitchen tables!! by Ayaress · · Score: 4, Funny

      I once saw the distance to the moon and back measured in twinkies, the amount of energy used by a Saturn V launch in AA batteries, etc.

      As for LoC, I had a professor who had a pretty accurate opinion of using it as a unit of measurement: "The LoC is damn huge. You don't know how big it is exactly, because its just so damn huge. And its always getting bigger, so even in fifty years when our opinion of damn huge would be considered pretty damn small, it's still going to be damn big. So in effect, you use LoC as a unit to measure volumes of data so big that nobody cares anymore."

    5. Re:Kitchen tables!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      If you saw the movie "The postman always rings twice" then you would know that a kitchen table is definitely sports equipment.

    6. Re:Kitchen tables!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As for LoC, I had a professor who had a pretty accurate opinion of using it as a unit of measurement: "The LoC is damn huge. You don't know how big it is exactly, because its just so damn huge. And its always getting bigger, so even in fifty years when our opinion of damn huge would be considered pretty damn small, it's still going to be damn big. So in effect, you use LoC as a unit to measure volumes of data so big that nobody cares anymore."

      Damn straight! That damn prof has a damn fine way with words, damnit.

    7. Re:Kitchen tables!! by forkazoo · · Score: 1

      It's all a conspiracy to secretly switch us to metric. A kitchen table can be about a square meter. "The size of a bus" is about ten meters. and, so on. Soon, we will start seeing units like a centi-kitchen-table, and it will spell doom for imperial goodness.

    8. Re:Kitchen tables!! by grozzie2 · · Score: 1

      The reality is, the instrument has resolution defined in metric units (meters), but that would be far to confusing for the american public. A suitable proxy was chosen to publicize it, the kitchen table (approximately 2 meters). This is a measurement that would be understood by at least a simple majority of the population.

    9. Re:Kitchen tables!! by FleaPlus · · Score: 1

      Don't forget the Smoot:

      A smoot is a unit of distance (or "length", as physical scientists say) used for measuring the Harvard Bridge. It is named after an MIT fraternity pledge at Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, Oliver R. Smoot (class of 1962), who in October, 1958 was rolled head over heels by his fraternity brothers to measure the length of the bridge. The smoot is equal to his height (five feet and seven inches -- 1.70 m), and the bridge's length was measured to be "364.4 smoots and one ear". Everyone walking across the bridge today sees painted markings saying how many smoots they are from the Boston-side river bank. The marks are repainted each year by the incoming pledge class of Lambda Chi Alpha. They have become well-accepted by the public, to the point that they are sometimes used by police to indicate the location of accidents along the bridge.

      This was only the beginning of Smoot's career in standards and measurement; he later became Chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and President of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

  3. Nothing much to see here... by karrde · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Call me again in 2 years after it's taken it's first photo...

    300 days till launch
    7 months to orbital insertion, and
    6 months before it reachs a stable operational orbit.

    so it's 2006 before we get a photo, and probably mid to late 2007 before a spot is chosen... and then they'll start planning a mission... guess we're going to miss that 2010 date...

    1. Re:Nothing much to see here... by purfledspruce · · Score: 2, Informative
      Actually, the next rover is already in design. It's possible to design a rover without knowing where it will land. ;)

      It's a pretty neat rover, too...too bad that the public site at JPL isn't very good:

      http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/future/ms l.html
    2. Re:Nothing much to see here... by karrde · · Score: 1

      I wasn't thinking rover. I guess when I read landing site I assumed they were looking for a landing site for a manned mission. And yes some planning can go up front before you know where you land. But they probably aren't going to launch w/o knowing, and then you have to get the launch windows for the transit... which are what 9mos apart?

      Like I was saying, a man on Mars by 2010 probably isn't happening.

    3. Re:Nothing much to see here... by purfledspruce · · Score: 1

      launch windows for Earth to Mars low energy trajectories are 26 months apart.

      A manned mission to Mars isn't even in the planning stages yet. NASA is hoping to fly humans to the Moon before 2020, and a human mission to Mars sometime in the 2030s.

      Of course, Burt Rutan will probably beat us there! :)

      You can see NASA's Vision for Space Exploration at: http://www.nasa.gov/missions/solarsystem/explore_m ain.html

  4. Correct link.. by barawn · · Score: 4, Informative

    That story would be

    here, rather than the Cassini/Huygens probe story that was linked to.

    More proof that /.ers don't read the article, eh?

  5. Next Mars misson... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...will look for CmdrTaco's brain. Cause it's not here on Earth!! Hahahahahhaaha...i hate my life.

  6. Kitchen table? by spitzak · · Score: 2

    I think it would be possible to ship a kitchen table with a mars landing mission, so they really don't have to look for one!

    1. Re:Kitchen table? by Atomizer · · Score: 2

      Yes, just get one from Ikea. They pack flat.

  7. Link to the correct story by fenimor · · Score: 1

    Here is the correct llink Physorg And this is another cool stuff from the same place

    1. Re:Link to the correct story by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

      Left Link? Is that anything like a left value (lvalue) or a left user (luser)?

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    2. Re:Link to the correct story by richie2000 · · Score: 1
      If Cheney is Grand Moff Tarkin, and Bush is Darth Vader- who is Emperor Palpatine?

      Karl Rove.

      --
      Money for nothing, pix for free
  8. Typo in the headline blurb by devphil · · Score: 2, Funny


    Weighing 2,180 kilograms, the spacecraft will be the largest ever to orbit Mars

    I think you misspelled "impact (after another management decision results in trivial math errors going uncaught)" there.

    --
    You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
    1. Re:Typo in the headline blurb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      +1 Informative? More like -1 Flamebait.

    2. Re:Typo in the headline blurb by TarlCabbot · · Score: 0
      Should be 2.2 megagrams.
      Sound it out. Who's got time for sylables?

      Shit, did I just make it plain that I'm an American?

  9. Hmm, communications relay by silicon+not+in+the+v · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There are a couple of neat aspects of this orbiter. The long distance photography is cool, but I like the idea of its being a long term communications relay. That would take a lot of the transmission power requirements off of the surface probes and landers. They would just have to have a strong enough signal to get up to orbit, and then the orbiter(apparently with the help of solar power) would be able to retransmit back to Earth.

    --
    We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
    1. Re:Hmm, communications relay by stevesliva · · Score: 2, Informative

      NASA's Global Surveyor and Odessey and ESA's Express already provide data relay capabilities.

      --
      Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
  10. Will they see the flag? by DAldredge · · Score: 1

    . Ms. Sheila Jackson Lee asked if that Mars explorer would be able to get a picture
    of that American flag that the astronauts left up there. ..

    She's in congress fokes!

    1. Re:Will they see the flag? by grozzie2 · · Score: 1

      Is this an indication of the intelligence of congress critters? Or is is an indication of the intelligence of the folks that voted for them ? or is it more likely, all of the above...

    2. Re:Will they see the flag? by n54 · · Score: 1

      It's not an indication of intelligence at all (haha, but seriously it isn't).

      It is an indication of her (lack of) knowledge about mars, human spaceflight, and "current" news regarding the same topics.

      I have no idea if she's democrat, republican or independent so I claim objectivity! I'm pretty sure she got voted in on other topics than space exploration though (sincerely hope so) :)

      --
      this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
    3. Re:Will they see the flag? by benhocking · · Score: 1

      I think her lack of knowledge would be more forgivable if she weren't on the House Science Committee's space subcommittee!

      I agree with your (implied) suggestion that such ignorance is non-partisan, although I wish it were the exception instead of the rule!

      --
      Ben Hocking
      Need a professional organizer?