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New Kind of Orbit Could Ease Mars Communications
japan_dan writes "An interesting way to enable Earth-Mars communication when the Sun occludes the direct radio line-of-sight: ESA proposes placing a pair of continuous-thrusting relay satellites, using a solar electric propulsion system — one in front and ahead of Mars, the other behind and below — with both following non-Keplerian, so-called 'B-orbits'. This means the direction of thrust is perpendicular to the satellites' direction of flight, allowing them to 'hover' with both Earth and Mars in view. Quoting from the Q&A: 'We found that a pair of relay satellites would only have to switch on their thrusters for about 90 days out of every 2.13-year period, and this solution would only increase the one-way signal travel time by one minute, so it could be effective.'" Here is the paper describing non-Keplerian orbits (PDF).
Houston> We haven't talked for a day, what's up?
Mars rover> Hey, I moved one meter!
Houston> No shit!
Yeah nothing that NASA has done has affected your life in the positive. Lets just wait for private enterprise to go there.
The only reason private enterprise is able to *think about* real space travel is because they are using the ~40 years of NASA knowledge and research.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/ten-nasa-inventions.htm
Ok so this is really basic, but also aerogel, and a laundry list of other things.
Being on Mars is really cool, and we have learned a lot about it. But as for usefulness it tells us maybe mining Mars wouldn't be that profitable (but did we know that before). But all the stuff they used to get to Mars, that shit trickels down FAST. I mean I personally believe that SSDs on the rovers are wat put them into the main stream. They lasted in a super harsh enviroment orders of magnitude longer than they were supposed to. So keep thinking all NASA produces is cool photos.
My addiction: Arguing with idiots. AKA Slashdot!
This is slightly tangential, but worth noting I think:
This will be handy when we can't afford to lose contact with Mars for even a few days, but there's a bigger problem lurking in inter-planetary communications: bandwidth. We don't really have enough Deep Space Network dishes (particularly, the large 70-m ones) to talk to all of our missions as much as we should. We're sacrificing data collection on billion-dollar missions on a daily basis on the grounds that we don't have enough bandwidth to get it back. When we put people or even just more missions on Mars, that'll only get worse.
Sorry, I tried to read the summary but I didn't make it past 'continually-thrusting'.