Mars Express Successfully Deploys First Boom

Psiolent writes "As reported yesterday, the Mars Express team is beginning the antenna deployment process. The BBC reports that the satellite has successfully deployed the first boom of the primary antenna. The article also states that 'the mood amongst instrument team members is now said to be positive, following the problem-free deployment of the first boom.' The second boom of the primary antenna is scheduled to be deployed Sunday."

Comments

Falling standards

[Anonymous Coward]

So a very tiny part of a relatively small-scale space mission went well. That's terrific.

Remember the day when an entire manned space flight going without a hitch was barely considered newsworthy?

Prior to the Challenger explosion, it seemed almost inevitable that mankind would simply get better and better at putting men and objects out into space.

Since then, we've had blurry telescopes, lost probes, crash landings, re-entry burn-ups, space station fires, metric conversion errors, and a plethora of other humiliating failures.

What was the biggest triumph of space exploration in the last ten years?

Well, you could say it's some of our distant unmanned probes on the outer reaches of the solar system sending us cool pictures, but those were launched back in the Good Old Days when it seems like we knew WTF we were doing.

No, our highwater mark for the last ten years is a solar-powered toy car which rolled around for a few days on the surface of Mars.

Pathetic.

Do we need the commies back to scare us in to innovating once again? Seems a rather high price to pay.

Re:Falling standards

[DigiShaman]

And to think this was all done using slide rules and mainframes with less processing power to that of your average microwave oven, refridge, or vacuum cleaner (in part to the Z80 chip).

Re:Falling standards

[Jafafa Hots]

lol. Friend, I've forgotten more about space science than you ever knew.
I was enough of a space fanatic that I memorized the names and launch dates of every major nasa unmanned mission, the launch dates of every manned nasa mission along with the mission accomplishments and of course the astronauts names... the names, launch dates and accomplishments of the soviet unmanned missions, the names of all the soviet cosmonauts, their missions, durations...
In the mid 1980's I had a letter published in Time Magazine correcting their science writer about some historical data on one of the soviet missions.
I've moved on to other things in recent years, but for many years I lived and breathed the space program.

Yes, the hubble has done great work, and would rank up there with Apollo and Voyager too. The Cassini probe is a great mission, the huygens probe was great, though in my opinion the enormous mass of scientific data it returned (and is returning) is not quite as groundbreaking as the Mars Rovers'.

And my enthusiasm has nothing to do with "cool! remote control cars!" but instead has to do with having a lab that is testing and sampling rocks and soil including subsurface soil from multiple locations, allowing comparison, etc...

There has been an immense amount learned, but it just doesn't convert resdily into snazzy headlines . Frankly, Skippy, to say that from a scientific standoint they're not exciting is complete idiocy - I have seen the geologists and chemists and other space scientists this excited since Voyager II's flyby of Saturn.