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Mars Orbiter Launch Delayed
Mictian writes "NASA's newest Mars probe, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), was originally scheduled to be launched from Kennedy Space Center Wednesday morning atop an Atlas 5 rocket. However a potential problem with the Atlas' Redundant Rate Gyro Units (RRGUs), that are part of the vehicle's flight control system, detected at Lockheed Martin's factory has caused the engineers to make sure that the two RRGUs in MRO's rocket are working, thus delaying the launch at least until Thursday morning. There is a 1.5 hour launch window daily until the end of the month."
They are planning on testing the gyro unit today so they can get the launch off Thursday morning.
Oddly enough, the Atlas V acually uses Russian engines in the 1st stage. Ironic for a rocket that was originally an ICBM.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
It takes almost 5 seconds searching the term in the Wikipedia.
Launch window is a term used in aerospace to describe a time period in which a particular rocket must be launched. For trips into Earth orbit almost any time will do, but if the spacecraft intends to rendezvous with another (or a planet, or other point in space) the launch must be carefully timed so that the orbits overlap at some point in the future. If the rocket does not launch in the "window", it has to wait for the next one before it can be launched.
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Yeah, and if it DOESN'T get to outer space on the right course, then your pretty little orbiter is nothing more than a multimillion-dollar piece of useless space junk.
So it's important that your rocket goes in the right direction. This is actually very hard to do. A rocket is inherently unstable, as the thrust isn't ever perfectly aligned with the center of mass, and any errors in position tend to magnify themselves.
Ever blown up a balloon and released it? Notice how it flew every which way like crazy? Mostly NOT toward Mars?
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Actually launch window in this case (better explained in a post above) has to do with Earth's rotation, Earth's orbit around the sun, and Mars' orbit around the sun, among other celestial gravitational pulls and such. Basically since we don't have uber-powerful engines (or enough fuel to keep them going for long periods of time) and rely mostly on drifting in orbits to reach interplanetary targets, there's only a certain time frame that you can launch in and still be able to reach the orbit of the object you're aiming at.
This mission will carry the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRise), which is "the largest camera ever sent out of Earth's orbit and will deliver the highest resolution images of Mars yet" according to an article that adds "The camera utilizes a series of mirrors and lenses that project the image onto a cluster of CCDs rendering images with a resolution up to 20,000 pixels by 40,000 lines, an image so large that it would take 1,200 typical computer screens to fully display. The camera's high resolution will enable the identification of objects as small as a coffee table while the camera orbits 300 kilometers above the planet's surface."
Back in January 2004, there was an interesting article at Space.com about the high quality of the 1-megapixel camera used by the Spirit rover; I assume this is manufactured to similar quality control standards (although by a different team), but the article doesn't specify and the cameras are not manufactured by the same groups. The Spirit PANCAM has two CCDs whereas this has at least 14 (28?).
1. The early Atlas rockets were known for exploding on the pad when they had a Mercury capsule mounted on them. You see, the spacecraft was a far heavier payload than the Atlas was designed to carry. They were originally intended to carry a modest nuclear warhead, not an astronaut and all the things needed to keep him alive. All the weak points in the Atlas were eventually strengthened, and it went on to lauch 4 guys into orbit without much trouble(Glenn, Carpenter, Schirra, and Cooper all rode Atlases).
In any case, you did notice, didn't you, that they're using an Atlas 5? Don't you think that after four more (numbered)generations, this just might be a more reliable rocket than guys in the '60s could ever wish for?
2. And the stuff about Glenn's flight? He was only ever scheduled for three orbits. Both his flight and Carpenter's flight were planned this way. If both proved to be successful, ony then would they try for more ambitious flights. Go take a look at the book Deke!, written by "chief" astronaut Deke Slayton. He goes into a lot of details of some of the planning of many of the missions.
As far as the rest of your comment goes, while I mostly agree with you, I also realize that since I'm living in a country with a democratic(ish) government, the sentiments of the majority will dictate(more or less) national policy. If the masses don't care for piloted space flight, neither will their representatives or sentators, which will eventually lead to the pathetic funding piloted space flight receives. I also think that, even with the limited budget, if the piloted space flight guys had permanenly grounded the shuttle after the Challenger accident and funneled all the shuttle budget after that into one or more R&D projects aimed at building a newer vehicle, we'd be much better off now. 20/20 hindsight, eh? Isn't it great?
I'd rather be flying
Resolution at 300km altitude is 30 cm per pixel for targeted observations (one of 3 modes). I beleve the 1% number is for targeted imaging only.
For the high gain, the pipe to Earth is up to 3.5 Mbit/sec (receiving at a 70m antenna) and about 2.4 Mbit/sec for a 34m antenna.
Expected total data volume for the prime mission only, (through 2010) is 34 terabtes!