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Mars Probe Probably Lost Forever

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the alas-poor-MGS dept.

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."

3 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. It was a good run... by hedgemage · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:It was a good run... by dsci · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is definitely still in the good luck category.

      Exactly. People can say what they want about NASA | JPL, but the bottom line is they put up some good stuff much of the time. What really got my eye was how they just 'asked' Opportunity to listen for it. That is, that those things are so dynamic in what they do and can be 'asked' to do simply amazes me.

      Who knew years ago when Opportunity (also past expected mission life, right?) was designed that it would be on-the-fly tasked to listen for another spacecraft's signal. That it was designed in this way is a testament to well planned engineering. IMO.

      --
      Computational Chemistry products and services.
  2. Re:Time to update... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It might be time to update the Mars Scorecard.... although we got some good work out of the MGS, it might be time to mark this one up for the green guys.


    You know, I mostly stopped commenting (or even reading) space related stories on /. long ago, because the commenters and moderators don't know jack shit about space or space exploration.

    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.