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Mars Express' 2nd Boom Deployment Postponed

Posted by Hemos on from the missives-from-the-red-planet dept.

ricshaw2k4 writes "Releasing the second MARSIS radar boom from Mars Express has been delayed after a problem with the first boom was discovered. From the BBC "Officials said 12 out of 13 segments that comprise the first boom had deployed successfully, but segment 10 was not fully locked into place." Lets just hope segment 10 wasn't eaten by the Martians!"

6 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. spell check by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    wasn't eaten by fthe Martians

    THE

    So I'm a spelling nazi. Big deal! Sue me.

  2. Field Alignment Tool by Detritus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You can have all of the mechanical engineers that you want, but in real life, nothing beats a mechanic with a hammer, who can give it a good whack in the right place.

    --
    Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
  3. Re:Stupid question by macpeep · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The dipole booms are 20 meters long each, and the center monopole boom is 7 meters. Even when folded into 13 segments, each bipole boom segment is 1.5 meters long. If they were folded 3 times, they would each be nearly 7 meters long and not fit into the launching rocket (a Soyuz).

    In general, you can pretty much assume that if you think the scientists have done a stupid error, then you just don't know the whole story.

  4. Wow, dumb. by Civil_Disobedient · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Lets just hope segment 10 wasn't eaten by the Martians!

    I've read a lot of dumb things on /., but I think this may win the prize.

    For today, at least.

  5. Re:Boom! Boom! Out go the lights! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
    Pat Travers did it.

    Little Walter did it first.

  6. Bash NASA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
    Come-on Slashdoters, you're not doing your jobs: I haven't seen one post trashing NASA about this. Every time there is an item about a failure in space, there is a flood of anti-NASA postings. You know "if it weren't for NASA we would now have a Disneyland on the Sun, and it would cost $2.45 to go there round trip for fun on Friday and I would be going to the Crab Nebula for magnetic surfing on spring break."

    Where are all those comments that show that the average Shashdot reader is just plain smater then just about anyone on the Earth? And how if you were in charge it would all be easily taken care of, only you're just too busy playing Doom (or whatever) and trying to remember where you saw that really hot girl on one of those porn sites, and trying to forget what happened the last time you talked to a girl who was actually in the same room and willing to be within 4 feet of you?

    Just because this is not a US government program that dosen't mean that you can't blame the US government anyway. You can always talk about how business can really do it better, since you have all that spare time living at home where you parents are picking up the cost of sheler and food, and you don't have to bother picking up your room or doing laundry. All you need to do is make sure that your parents don't walk in on you when you are looking for that web site with the hot girl (remember her?) and start yelling about getting a job. Becasue it's all the fault of those slackers at NASA. They never get it right, evern when it's the EU space program.

    And if you want to know why I'm an Annonymous Coward, it's becasue I'm ashamed to be seen posing on this web site...