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NASA Struggles To Contact Lost Mars Probe
David Shiga writes "Just when NASA was about to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft, the probe suddenly lost contact with Earth, New Scientist Space reports. NASA last heard from the MGS probe on November 5, two days before the 10th anniversary of its launch from Earth. The MGS team is not sure yet what the problem is, but a micrometeorite could have jolted the spacecraft's main antenna out of alignment with Earth, or it might have a solar array problem and too little power to talk to Earth as a result. If they can't re-establish communication this week, NASA may try to diagnose the problem by taking pictures of MGS with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The two spacecraft come within about 100 kilometers of each other several times each week."
We always either hear that NASA is doing a terrible job or that they are doing great in the face of great challenges.
I'd love to see a list of projects in table format that show either mission success or mission failure and the reasons behind the failure.
If anyone has a link, please post!
The MGS team is not sure yet what the problem is, but a micrometeorite could have jolted the spacecraft's main antenna out of alignment with Earth
That wasn't a "meteorite", and I can tell you that the martians probably don't like being spied on any more than we do.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
I had been wondering why updates from Opportunity had been so scarce over the last couple of weeks, given that the rover has reached the most interesting part of its traverse.
The communication bottleneck created by the MGS problem may be partly to blame.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
MRO - "Say Cheese"
*flash*
MGS - "What? oh I wasn't ready"
All in 1's and 0's of course.
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002794.html
Rumsfield simply took it home with him when he cleaned out his office.
Table-ized A.I.
The probe cannot reply to Earth signals because some ahole took away its "Reply" button!
Table-ized A.I.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6300590/
You know the one I mean
For the "oh NASA can't do anything right" folks, keep in mind that Mars Global Surveyor finished its primary and extended missions years ago and has continued to operate as a communications relay aiding the Spirit and Opportunity rovers since then. It can only be described as an overwhelming success, especially considering its budget and trailblazing design.
Moreover, even if we discount MGS, NASA has 2 operational orbiters and 2 operational rovers on Mars (ESA also has an operational orbiter). With MGS, there had been 6 operational spacecraft on or around Mars, which is unprecedented in human history.
A perfect example of "Scientific Progress Goes 'Boink'!"
Just last month we learned that Spirit was bored out of its mind with Mars. Obviously the rover has been passing time by trying out its throwing arm on some of those rock specimens it's been collecting.
Either that or it and Opportunity have started one-on-one baseball. You think your neighbors get mad when you hit the ball into their window -- that's nothing compared to what'll happen when NASA finds out Spirit took out MGS with a homer.
With Bush in office, Spirit and Opportunity lasted well beyond their life expectancy. Couple of days after the libs get Congress and Senate, space hardware begins to malfunction.
Ah, well. We'll never get to Mars anyway. When Hillary gets into office 2 years from now, the CEV will be scrapped along with the rest of the space program. More money for social programs and some token medical research.
But at least the internet will be finally reeled in and tightly controlled. It will be an improvement. No more slashdot. No more digg. No more indymedia. Only politically correct and copyright-friendly content from 2008 on. Can't wait.
I blame giant robots
--Rags
Life is like a burrito. Sometimes the beans go bad.
HAL: I've just picked up a fault in the AE35 unit. It's going to go 100% failure in 72 hours.
GUI == Graphical User Interference
OK so it's a bit busted (potentially) but isn't it great that there is another vehicle nearby that can take a look? We're talking about Mars here! It's stories like this that show we really are starting to get out there in a big way, none of this one probe every 5 years that then lands and dies in a couple of days.
Let's have a big hand for the human race, people..
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
It's clear what's going on... terrorists have taken over and are trying to steal it. What they'll actually do is send in an ex-black-ops operative called out of retirement, because he's dealt with this kind of thing before, and because his genetic twin is the mastermind. This should be obvious. It's what always happens when dealing with a... Metal Gear. But this time we're not on Solid ground. We're in Space.
And we've got Snakes in Space.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Ahem.. TFA said they only passed each other within 100km several times a week. It's almost incomparable to the ~1000 functioning artificial satellites that are orbiting Earth (plus a few more thousand old satellites that are now classified as space debris) If you track the most notable ones with tools like http://www.heavens-above.com/ then you would see that they pass each other several times a day...
I'm sure we do though! I's the thing about eactly known orbits and intercpet times, and whether the camera is pointing in the right direction - If you could et people to do it, I'm sure you can obtain images of other earth orbiting satellites from said satellites.
Has Slashdot lost it's threading, or is it just me ?
Y'know, I really wish Slashdot had a 'Talk' forum, where we could all discuss (sorry, bitch) about stuff on Slashdot in general without our posts being connected to an article.
-Jar.
Together, We Can Make Slashdot Better. I Do NOT Mod ACs. - Check Me Out
The resolution of MRO is really simple to calculate: at 300km, you get 30cm/pixel. So at 100km, you'd get 10cm/pixel. I'm really looking forward to see that kind of image of MGS, but without contact, how long can they wait before the orbit becomes uncertain? Pointing would be really difficult IMO.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
The data is just caught in a hugh deluge of spam selling martion sex aids.
Wait a few more days and it should make it through.
Like George Noory, Art Bell, or even the ever intelligent and enlightened recipient of the Angstrom Award, Richard C. Hoagland.
Never Mind... Finally found out why in the 'Older Stuff' sidebar...
Idea #2: Slashdot has a 'sticky article option' that's always at the top of the main page, so those of us who aren't on American Time, get to see the important stuff when we wake up.
-Jar.
Together, We Can Make Slashdot Better. I Do NOT Mod ACs. - Check Me Out
The MGS team is not sure yet what the problem is, but a micrometeorite could have jolted the spacecraft's main antenna out of alignment with Earth.
...i mage.jpg/
If it's a MGS problem, then there's only one man for the job
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040709/mgs%20
I wrote a ksh cgi clone of slashcode for my family website and implemented the same sticky article feature. My article ID's are 32 bits :)
You can post anything you like in your journal and people can reply.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Maybe 'Surveyor Snake' triggered an alert among the Martians, who proceeded to shoot it to pieces. Time for a camouflaged version, NASA!
At least a couple of months. Enough to take some pictures. Anyway, after 2 or 3 months without contact, you can safely declare the probe dead. After 10 years in orbit, I think maybe it has simply broken.
mr2cents - it's been done before and while the timing is no doubt a bitch, it's quite possible.
g s-images.html and from Malin Space Science Systems, the San Diego company that built and operates the camera, at http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/05/19/ind ex.html .
linky
One Mars Orbiter Takes First Photos of Other Orbiters
Photographs from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft released today are the first pictures of any spacecraft orbiting Mars ever taken by another spacecraft orbiting Mars.
The new images of the European Space Agency's Mars Express and NASA's Mars Odyssey are available on the Internet from NASA at http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/m
Of course, if all they see is a smear of debris, well I guess they know they won't be getting any more data.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
The poor thing's probably slashdooted by now ;-)
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
You are joking right? We have so much stuff flying around our planet its a suprise that our astronauts can still go outside the spacecraft without getting turned into swiss cheese. every government that can reach space probably has at least 1 satellite looking down on us. So if anything breaks up that way we could point another satellite at it or we could just go up there and fix it which is usually a little easier.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-OYoHJlyGM
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
suggests Klingon disruptors
This is a stunt to help promote the next Transformers movie. They'll probably send a video back to NASA showing the things last transmission.
Can I bum a sig?
All these worlds are yours except Mars. Attempt no landings there.
I think this means the Transformers are coming...
Oh no! Transformers got to it too!
It's just another Hollywood hoax as part of the build up to the Transformers Movie. It's gone the same way as the UK's Mars Beagle mission shown in the teaser trailer on the site
All these worlds are yours except MARS.
attempt no landings there.
use them together.
use them in peace.
Opportunity: .. in UR base killin your d00ds... ...what? huh?
Mars Global Surveyor:
Busy aligning my non-linear thoughts.
The vast majority of programs are failures but that's only because it's so dam hard. Sure there were a couple of DOH moments but not as many as just fate taking it's toll.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
NASA ... rich kids playing with taxpayers toys
we should have been building the moonbase by now
Snake?? Snaaaaake!!
Obviously it was the decepticons.
We all know the Martians don't like being spied on. We are lucky they don't have anymore p238 space modulators!
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Anything involving NASA is more than meets the eye. Oh ho!
The MGS is 10 years old and a really great piece of technology but I am not surprised it failed at this point and I wondered if it was going to make it to 2008. Although it is a "downer" to have it fail, we should take advantage of it. We know what in MGS that is good and with 10 years of improvement we can make a new Mars Global Surveryor that did everything the old one did plus more.
It just had an important birthday. It's probably hung over.
Working with US satellite programs, I have come to realize how hard it is to actually take care of a bird in flight. There are so much junk flying around in space that could take out your satellite, not to mention things like solar storms and such, all this you have to track and adjust for. Of course, something's you don't see coming.
d =01-074
http://nasaexplores.nasa.gov/show2_articlea.php?i
In addition, a satellite can go anywhere from 500 degrees to -500 degrees in a single orbit. Even with all this, more often then not satellites are lasting years beyond their expected life.
So give 'em a break...
With its other two martian buddies, celebrating its own birthday in a nearby martian bar... No worries - it'll get back up, once it's sober!
From about Oct 25 to Nov 10 Mars was on the the other side of the Sun. The Suns radio noise effectively blocks transmission either way. I notice Opportunity started returning images this week.
It's obvious. NASA must have used binary coded decimal for the elapsed time of the mission with the top 4 bits representing the number of years. With the year reaching 10 an overflow happened...
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Some of the Rover software initially just allowed three-digit dates. Spirit reach 1000 Sols late October and Opportunity next week. Fortunately the software was repaired during a winter slowdown tuneup. Nice idea: reprogrammable robots.
I know that two must be a difficult number for you to count to, but it's around 7 orders of magnitude smaller than the number of things in Earth orbit. Around 10,000 of those are tracked continuously to prevent collisions.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
...since it failed two days BEFORE its 10th anniversary it couldn't have been a warranty-thing.
(said since, this far in the thread, nobody has used the word warranty yet)
"Our probe, Hamster One, seems to have lost contact right near Uranus..."
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
This depends entirely on the orbit. Geosynchronous satellites never pass each other. The ones listed in heavens above are low orbits (that's part of why you can see them).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HslRCcRctFA
geek n performer who performs morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken
Clearly the probe is busy reading the increased spam from October, particularly with all those offers to grow a bigger antenna...
The Mars Global Surveyor completed its primary 5 year mission in 2001. Of course, the hardest part of the mission was just getting there, so it was no surprise that it continued operating for additional 5 years, during which it has continued to be quite productive. Typically, space probes are operated until they no longer have fuel to manuever with, but it's always been an accepted possibility that a terminal condition could develop. For example, the Pathfinder lander's solar panels became coated with dust to the point that it could no longer power it's electronics.
In the face of some extraordinary long term successes like the Mars rovers and the Voyagers, it's easy to have high expectations for other missions, but the fact remains that MGS did it's job and then some. Frankly, I have good hopes that NASA will be able to resolve the issue, as it did previously with the rovers and in several other examples, but there's no shame if they can't.
I have the answer http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-679140532 6970238531&q=transformers
hehe
There are three possibilities
1.) MGS's solar panels have turned away from the sun.
2.) There's a large meteor blocking the transmission. or
3.) Some joker loaded that d@#$ Star Trek screen saver onto the system again.
Nothing can stop that from 'phoning home'.