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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."

6 of 31 comments (clear)

  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 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."

  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...

  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?