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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."
Did they check Mars? I would bet that it is probably there.
Was that the one crushed by the Decepticons? I don't think we'll be recovering it anytime soon.
...it was obviously captured by aliens.
Mmmm......sacrelicious.
When did all this happen?
Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history
... two thousand years of Christian fulminating against the Jews."
RANCHO SANTA FE, CALIF. - In recent months, a spate of atheist books have argued that religion represents, as "End of Faith" author Sam Harris puts it, "the most potent source of human conflict, past and present."
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Columnist Robert Kuttner gives the familiar litany. "The Crusades slaughtered millions in the name of Jesus. The Inquisition brought the torture and murder of millions more. After Martin Luther, Christians did bloody battle with other Christians for another three centuries."
In his bestseller "The God Delusion," Richard Dawkins contends that most of the world's recent conflicts - in the Middle East, in the Balkans, in Northern Ireland, in
Kashmir, and in Sri Lanka - show the vitality of religion's murderous impulse.
The problem with this critique is that it exaggerates the crimes attributed to religion, while ignoring the greater crimes of secular fanaticism. The best example of religious persecution in America is the Salem witch trials. How many people were killed in those trials? Thousands? Hundreds? Actually, fewer than 25. Yet the event still haunts the liberal imagination.
It is strange to witness the passion with which some secular figures rail against the misdeeds of the Crusaders and Inquisitors more than 500 years ago. The number sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition appears to be about 10,000. Some historians contend that an additional 100,000 died in jail due to malnutrition or illness.
These figures are tragic, and of course population levels were much lower at the time. But even so, they are minuscule compared with the death tolls produced by the atheist despotisms of the 20th century. In the name of creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no Inquisitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants murdered more than 100 million people.
Moreover, many of the conflicts that are counted as "religious wars" were not fought over religion. They were mainly fought over rival claims to territory and power. Can the wars between England and France be called religious wars because the English were Protestants and the French were Catholics? Hardly.
The same is true today. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not, at its core, a religious one. It arises out of a dispute over self-determination and land. Hamas and the extreme orthodox parties in
Israel may advance theological claims - "God gave us this land" and so forth - but the conflict would remain essentially the same even without these religious motives. Ethnic rivalry, not religion, is the source of the tension in Northern Ireland and the Balkans.
p>Yet today's atheists insist on making religion the culprit. Consider Mr. Harris's analysis of the conflict in Sri Lanka. "While the motivations of the Tamil Tigers are not explicitly religious," he informs us, "they are Hindus who undoubtedly believe many improbable things about the nature of life and death." In other words, while the Tigers see themselves as combatants in a secular political struggle, Harris detects a religious motive because these people happen to be Hindu and surely there must be some underlying religious craziness that explains their fanaticism.
Harris can go on forever in this vein. Seeking to exonerate secularism and atheism from the horrors perpetrated in their name, he argues that Stalinism and Maoism were in reality "little more than a political religion." As for Nazism, "while the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a predominantly secular way, it was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity." Indeed, "The holocaust marked the culmination of
One finds the same inanities in Mr. Dawkins's work. Don't be fooled by this rhetorical legerdemain. Dawkins and Harris cannot explain why, if Nazism w
Just a cool video, that's all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ajsXzTFLYA
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.
I won't. Up until a minute ago I didn't even know it existed. I suppose there are uncountably many government programs which I am rationally ignorant of... I hope most of them provide some benefit to someone, somewhere, which would put them in marked contrast to space probes. We could just give Lockheed Martin or whoever the R&D slush fund directly and not lose billions of paying the NASA middleman.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
A pink rabbit beating a large bass drum was just spotted in the vicinity of Mars. Communications with the Mars Probe are expected to resume momentarily... ;)
"Nature bats last..."
How the hell did the loss of a rover lead you to atheism being the source of all violence? Also, in regards to that nice little book, the bloodthirstiness is sort of global. There are just as many mass murderers who say "god told me to" as there are mass murderers who decide that the lack of a big scary bogeyman means they can throw morality out the window.
"either because its orbit has shifted since last contact, or because it isn't reflecting enough sunlight to be visible"
So either it wasn't there or it was there but they didn't see it. I think that has to pretty safe to say they have limited the problem down considerably.
:(){
Why are humans, a plague on this planet, trying to gain dominion over the others?
If God had meant us to fly, he'd have given us rocket engines, day one.
(Yes, tongue is firmly in cheek.)
668: Neighbour of the Beast
It's probably in an unknown orbit. Chances are as our space travel technology improves and we start to colonize Mars, it will turn up someday. Either it will be detected in orbit by one of our spacecraft, or its orbit will decay and its remains will be found on the Martian surface as research and civilization there expands. It might be a few hundred years, but eventually most of what we sent there could be found.
Either that or it will appear in a future episode, with..certain...alien mutations.
Many people joke, somewhat grimly, about the casualty rate for Mars missions. In this case we have a serious lesson to draw from what is happening. Having several other probes active at the same time gives us options we otherwise would not have.
If Mars Global Surveyor had been out there all alone, mission controllers would have little choice other than waiting for it to somehow recover and renew contact on its own. Having Spirit, Opportunity, the Mars Reconaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey, and Mars Express all out there at the same time, we get more chances to figure out some truly innovative way to save the troubled spacecraft.
However, if all these other efforts fail, we should seriously consider sending up a human repair crew to rescue Mars Global Surveyor. We have seen how the Hubble Space Telescope can rally public support for extra launches of the Space Shuttle. A thoughtfully run campaign to save Mars Global Surveyor could, in some small but perhaps crucial way boost public support for sending humans to Mars.
Oh look, there's a video of aliens carrying it off on Youtube...lol just kidding, I guess not EVERYTHING is on Youtube. But clearly, it was kidnapped by aliens. The next one they send ought to have anti-alien defense mechanisms. Btw it sounds like there's a freakin lot of rovers and such on Mars at the moment. Just how many does Earth have there at the moment? I thought it was like 2.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Off topic, but you've just reminded me of a Billy Connolly sketch.
He said "Go on TV and tell the audience that God talks to you, they will send in money. Go to any loony bin and tell them God talks to you, they won't even let you home for your pajamas."
This space for rent
Continual probing of a heavenly body for almost 10 years? Beats my record by a long shot.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
Always remember: The Medium is the Message, and the Message is the Audience (and the message is really stupid).
Linux violates 235 Microsoft patents.
Maybe the dingo ate your baby.
probably its software was written in java.
Calling Europen Space Agency? Didn't those guys lost their own rover too?
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.
Why is the world spending billions upon billions on a planet scientists knew there wasn't any life on before we even went up. Now they continue to send probe after probe to this one planet like it is NASA's lovechild. There truly is nothing more to see on that rock, for we have all seen the countless images from mars. I am not even going to get into the absolute stupidity and madness of sending a portion of the population to live there either.
Goodnight, sweet prince.
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.
Check out our infosecurity industry blog: http://securitymusings.com/
This is what happens when you believed the hype and put the cheaper Radio Shack Energizer Bunny batteries in your mission critical apps way back then...
Perhaps if we ever colonize Mars, someone will stumble upon its wreckage.
My mom can pick it up after she gets me from soccer practice.
NASA was trying to cut costs by using off the shelf components. Unfortunately, UPS does not deliver replacement batteries to their current location ;)
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
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.
We own you. We now possess your land, your minerals, your precious spacecraft. You will surrender or you will die. Sycorax strong! Sycorax mighty! Sycorax rock!
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Forever? Is the submitter implying that humans will Never make it to Mars?
for a while longer. The two spacecraft, launched in the mid 1970's, are almost 30 years old. And they're still working, 9 billion miles away. They're well beyond the orbit of Pluto. Now that's impressive. Not to take away from Mars Global Surveyor or the twin rovers.
Okay, trying to take pictures of Beagle 2 was useful, because it could tell us whether the panels unfolded and give hints of the failure mode for consideration in future designs.
But what's the point of trying to take pictures of an orbiting craft? What useful data will we glean, if successful, that would either help restore MGS to functionality or inform future activity?
Mars Anti Satellite Command (MASC) reports another successful test of the new anti-satellite interceptor.
Perhaps to just know that it is still there and has not been (completely) destroyed. Knowing it is still there might justify continued efforts to contact it.
And sometimes when you lots of dollars and man-centuries invested in something, you just want to know what happened to it.
Computational Chemistry products and services.
its probing day it seems... now can you give us a puppet show detailing on how you are going to take over your planet? What? Everyone likes puppets except for you it seems INSPECTION FAILED Let the Pummeling BEGIN!!!!!!!!!!!
Being able to see its orientation to know if the antenna and solar panels are still at functional angles. Confirming that it wasn't hit by space debris. Verifying that there's not been a propellant leak that caused it to lose the necessary control. These are all important things too. If you see a bunch of gas jetting off in to space it can give you a good hint that things ain't goin so well.
Shouts To the 7heorists - obtain a copy of
Death to Videodrome! Long live The New flesh!
It's very clear -- the probe swept over an area that the owners didn't want surveyed, and set up us the bomb. Great justice was served.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Give us a URL to it and we will destroy it.
Biggest crock of shit ive ever heard. As an irishman, this offends me. I'd like to know where the author of this elephant shit got this from. Wikipedia doe'snt count. The plantation of ulster was a strategy to ensure prostant dominance in northern ireland in 1609. Religion was the primary motivation for the plantation, not an "ethnic purge". I challenge the author to demonstrate significant difference's between any english and irish person. barring the accent, irish and english people are pretty much physically identical. Also, take this tripe somewhere else. this is a thread for a NASA probe being lost, not a soapbox to push your crazy religious nonsense. to everyone else, i apologise for taking trollbait.
Same thing. First, verify it's where it's supposed to be. Second, if the resolution is good enough (and they weren't sure it would be) see if it seems to be oriented correctly.
If it's not where it's supposed to be, then there's a partial explanation of why it's not responding -- it's off course -- and also tells them their options are limited to setting it straight again. If it is, but it's oriented incorrectly, then the batteries are not getting recharged and you focus on getting it oriented correctly so it can get power again. If it is present, oriented correctly, and still not responding, then you've got a different set of options.
More information can only help.
Aside from the general difficulty of firing government workers, nobody is going to lose their jobs over happening to be around when a mission which had gone years past its planned expiration date finally winked out of existence. At worst they'll have a few weeks of sitting around the office watching the computer screens, then they'll be reassigned to another NASA project. Not that I really think NASA engineers would be in a terrible place if the agency suddenly vanished tomorrow. After all, they're rocket scientists. I'm sure they can work something out. (Yeah, I know, NASA also employs janitors and cafeteria workers and techs. So does the rest of the world. You don't need to have anything orbiting a celestial body to pay someone to move a broom around.)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
...welcome our alien probe stealing overlords... ...forgive me, I always wanted to do this :D
640KB of virtualized ram will be enough for everybody
Hi, yes looking at the spacecraft over a few frames would give you the opportunity to work out the orbit of the s/c. Once the rough orbit is known, the doppler shift can be worked out, and therefore the frequency. MGS has also been heard by radio hams, so its possible that some could watch for a signal. http://www.uhf-satcom.com/mgs/ has some info on the signals detected from MGS earlier this year. Lets hope NASA manages to either image this s/c, or chat to it with one of the rovers.
shucks, and awwwwwww.
nice try. no politics here, move along.
FairTax baby!
From the Associated Pres news:
"We have gathered information from inside NASA, that during the last minutes of contacts the Mars Global Surveyor sent out an encrypted message. After a grueling three hours trying to decrypt the message, top scientists at NASA was startled to see what appears to be a message from semi-intelligent beings. It reads 'How are you gentlemen!! All your base are belong to us.' Then the MGS went silent.
Governments of the United States and Western Europe have moved to take of every zig. Although it is widely believed that we have no chance to survive make our time, the scientists insist that we must indeed move zig.
God help us
... lost Probe, found by aliens and then it will come back... ... converted... ... in SURVYR!
;)
Which of course will be a new motorola phone model
We asked her a lot of questions when we were studying the planets. Poor old woman. It only took her a week of Uranus questions before she caught on.
Q: If we sent a probe to Uranus, would it ever come back?
A: No, it wouldn't.
Q: Does Uranus have a lot of gasses?
A: Yes, there is a lot of methane and sulfur.
Q: Is there a ring around Uranus?
A: No, I don't think so, but we can check.
Q: Is Uranus cold?
A: Yes, it's extremely frigid.
etc
has NASA received a ransom call?
Eclipse PDE and Me
" "Spirit has been displaying some anomalous behavior," said Project Manager John Callas, who noted the rover's unsuccessful attempts to flip itself over and otherwise damage its scientific instruments. "And the thousand or so daily messages of 'STILL NO WATER' really point to a crisis of purpose." "
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/54360
Which would account for not seeing it where expected...
Dog is my co-pilot.
www.ebay.mars
Snarbledorf and Veedlemore decided to use it to refuel their spacecraft, which i'm currently on.. now let me take this probe out from where the sun don't shine.
Cheers to great engineers at NASA.
Probably the result of some space golf shot that sliced 5 or 6 years prior and knocked it out of orbit. That's why they're trying the stunt again. *This* time they won't slice!
If in fact it has been up for ten years, that is a pretty good lifespan for an orbiter going around one of the rocky planets.
What's really amazing are those little rovers on the surface. Those definitely have Energizer Bunny Syndrome. In reality it is a tribute to the engineering.
I know, that was the Pathfinder, but cut me a little slack.
--pyro_dude
But we have to act fast.
The transhumanist in me finds it rather touching that a team of men and machines spread across two different planets is searching for one lost member.
Do you see what I did there?