NASA Satellite Looks For Response From Dead Mars Craft

coondoggie writes "NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter will next week make a number of passes over the presumed dead Phoenix Mars Lander on the surface of the planet and listen for what the space agency called possible, though improbable, radio transmissions. Odyssey will pass over the Phoenix landing site about 10 times this month and two longer listening tries in February and March trying to determine if the craft survived Martian winter and try to lock onto a signal and gain information about the lander’s status."

Comments

Love the space program

[jhoegl]

I wish we took 50% of the money given to the military and put it into space. We would be at Jupiter right now.

Re:Love the space program

[snmpkid]

Or there would be 50% more dead space junk on jupiter now

Re:Love the space program

[Anonymous Coward]

Or both. No success without failures. Or are Spirit and Opportunity not worth the landers that disappeared?

Re:Love the space program

[Monkeedude1212]

I don't see how a rocket with a payload of nothing but dollar bills is going to get us any closer to Jupiter.

Re:Love the space program

[Kintanon]

Are you serious? This is what you're bringing to the table? We already disrupt local economies and destroy the livelihoods of local farmers with the amount of food relief we drop into areas. The US spends more money on foreign aid than any other developed nation. We POUR food into the third world and their fucked up governments let the civilians starve while they feed their military and trade the food to other warlords for guns.

So take that bullshit and try to sell it elsewhere jackass.

Re:Love the space program

[jpmorgan]

While I agree with your sentiment about the longevity of the rovers, I'm a little confused about your tank comment. The military has no problem using and maintaining old equipment when it's good for the job... the famous example of the B-52 comes to mind. Military equipment tends to go obsolete faster than robot probes, because it doesn't take years (sometimes decades) to deploy a new model.

Re:Love the space program

[Speare]

I don't see how a rocket with a payload of nothing but dollar bills is going to get us any closer to Jupiter.

To be fair, sending C-130s with payloads of nothing but dollar bills didn't do more for success in Iraq, either.

Re:Love the space program

[MozeeToby]

No, the mission was designed to last 90 days (and probably more for budgetary reasons than anything else). The rovers were designed to last as long as possible while still fulfilling the mission goals and staying below the weight and size limits. If you need a high cost, high risk, extreme environment piece of equipment to last 90 days, you design it to last for decades. I'm not saying 7 years on Mars isn't impressive, but the idea that engineers expected the rovers to drop dead after 90 days is inaccurate.

As for the military not being as efficient, the space program uses one off engineering projects to solve unique challenges. Each rover and lander is designed specifically for the exact environment they will be placed in and is engineered nearly from the ground up. It produces amazing results but it is not economically efficient. The difference is, compared to the cost of getting a rover to mars, the cost of the rover itself is almost negligible so you may as well over engineer it and make sure the money you paid for the flight out there was worth it.

I'd love to see what the space program would do with twice or three times its current budget, it's a crying shame the way it's pushed to the back burner the way it is now. When was the last time a genuinely revolutionary space concept was flown by NASA? The first shuttle launch? Lots of people have ideas that can be made to work, ideas that could make space travel as cheap and common as Arthur C Clark ever envisioned it, we just haven't put the R&D into turning ideas into technology.

Re:Love the space program

[Chris Burke]

No, the mission was designed to last 90 days (and probably more for budgetary reasons than anything else)... I'm not saying 7 years on Mars isn't impressive, but the idea that engineers expected the rovers to drop dead after 90 days is inaccurate.

Actually it kinda is, not because they engineered the rover to only last that long (obviously you're right and they engineered it to be as robust as possible to survive on Mars), but because they thought the rover's solar panels would be too covered in dust to operate after that.

I still remember NASA putting out releasing saying how pleasantly surprised they were that the Martian wind turned out to be substantial enough to blow dust off the panels, and so the mission could extend past its original 90 day scope.

The fact that they continued the mission shows it wasn't budget constraints that limited it to 90 days... at least not the operations budget. I guess it was related to budget in the sense that this constrained them to only using solar power, and 90 days was just how long they thought a solar-powered rover could run.

Once they discover the spice worms

[MRe_nl]

Frank Herbert's prophecies will be seen for what they truly are, and L. Ron shall be proven false, and the Fremen formerly known as Al Qaida will start broadcasting improbable messages from Mars.

Re:What is the point in studying Mars?

[sznupi]

Precisely one of the points about Mars and other places outside of Earth. Without reaching to them, life will die out. We're in the phase of first small steps in ensuring it won't.