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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."
The probe cannot reply to Earth signals because some ahole took away its "Reply" button!
Table-ized A.I.
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.
Actually it is because Mars is nearly on the opposite side of the sun from Earth such that the sun interferes with transmissions between the two planets. Thus, the activity of Mars probes has been scaled way down for a few weeks until the sun moves out of the way.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
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.
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
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...