Next Mars Mission Will Look for Landing Sites

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."

Comments

Yea!

[Reducer2001]

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

Kitchen tables!!

[wakejagr]

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

Re:Kitchen tables!!

[Max von H.]

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_!

Re:Kitchen tables!!

[Ayaress]

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."

Nothing much to see here...

[karrde]

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...

Re:Nothing much to see here...

[purfledspruce]

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

Correct link..

[barawn]

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?

Kitchen table?

[spitzak]

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!

Re:Kitchen table?

[Atomizer]

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

Typo in the headline blurb

[devphil]

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.

Hmm, communications relay

[silicon not in the v]

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.

Re:Hmm, communications relay

[stevesliva]

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