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Mars Probe Probably Lost Forever
David Shiga writes, "NASA's silent Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft is likely lost forever. The space agency attempted to take a picture of the 10-year-old spacecraft using the newer Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, but did not detect it, either because its orbit has shifted since last contact, or because it isn't reflecting enough sunlight to be visible. NASA has now ordered its Opportunity rover to listen from the planet's surface for MGS's radio beacon. If that fails, the agency may call on the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft to join the search. But MGS may already have run out of power and NASA officials are not optimistic about recovering it."
You got to admit, we've been having some fantastic luck with some of the recent Mars missions. Unfortunately, the luck has either been fantasticly good or fantasticly bad.
We just have to keep reminding ourselves that sending something millions of miles through space to a speck of rock and have it function so well for so long is an amazing achievement in and of itsself.
SO many posts here about the curse of Mars or whatever, but you have to remember Surveyer was on the 10th year of its 2 year mission!! It exceeded its specs and performed beautifully. It's sad to lose an orbiter, but at this point, it shouldn't be considered a failed mission.
And I thought losing SSH access to my BSD server 3000 miles away was a tough break. I can't even imagine what kind of inventive hacks would be needed to restore a lost probe orbiting another planet.
Forever? Is the submitter implying that humans will Never make it to Mars?
You know, I mostly stopped commenting (or even reading) space related stories on
You just got added to the wrong column of that scorecard.
Mars Global Surveyor was a huge win in Earth's column. The spacecraft returned friggen superb results, for far longer than we expected. We didn't get "some good work out of MGS," we got vast amounts of good work out of it.
God damn, I wish Slashdot quit posting space related stories.
That's because Voyager is nuclear powered. Good luck getting the masses to approve shooting up another nuclear power package.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Implicit in your assumption is that a mission is operated solely by NASA civil service employees, which is a handy assumption for your flip answer, but meanwhile, back in the real world, that's not the case. I'll grant that the people who will be affected have some warning, but I guarantee you Griffin and Co. are already planning on where to reallocate the extended mission money if and when they declare MGS dead. That money doesn't all go to NASA facilities. The science operations for the Mars Orbiter Camera goes to a small company and the Thermal Emission Spectrometer money goes to Arizona State's Mars Space Flight Facility, a place I worked for 4 years and personally witnessed several people get laid off in early '06 because of NASA reallocation for the new manned program and to pay for hurricane damages to NASA facilities.
Yeah, I'm sure the people who got laid off worked something out, and the people who will get laid off will work something out, too. You can continue to choose to "call shenanigans" all you want, but you asked a question, I answered, you didn't like the answer and decided to wave it away with flippant handwaving. This has effects on real people and your "rational ignorance" becomes willful ignorance if you choose to continue to deny it.