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NASA Revamps Historic 4-Million-kg Mars Antenna

Posted by Soulskill on from the we're-gonna-need-a-bigger-bumper dept.

coondoggie writes NASA is working on some difficult renovations to reinvigorate its 70-meter-wide 'Mars antenna.' The antenna, a key cog in NASA's Deep Space Network, needs about $1.25M worth of what NASA calls major, delicate surgery. The revamp calls for lifting the antenna — about 4 million kilograms of finely tuned scientific instruments — to a height of about 5 millimeters so workers can replace the steel runner, walls and supporting grout."

5 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. iPhone by blhack · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What the hell does this have to do with the iPhone and its antenna?

    Dear Journalists,

    Referencing anything to do with the iPhone in an attempt to sound hip and relevant just makes you look stupid.

    Signed,
    Blhack

    --
    NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
  2. The Gordon Freeman Method by danbert8 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Might I suggest a crowbar. That's what I used for all my scientific research in Half Life. You could probably use one to lift the thing up a few millimeters.

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    Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
  3. Just Goldstone is Being Worked On? by CheshireCatCO · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So they're only revamping one out of three of the 70-m DSN antennae? I hope that they plan to do Canberra and Madrid, too. You need all three of them to get good 24-hr coverage. Actually, we need more of them. There are just too many missions needing 70-m time to downlink data right now. And nothing was sadder than watching good observations (which were otherwise totally possible) get killed because some other mission had priority on the big dishes.

    1. Re:Just Goldstone is Being Worked On? by TooMuchToDo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think a better solution is to implement store and forward, and start having craft in orbit that can queue data from deep space craft. You can than downlink it at your leisure without worrying either about contention issues on the 70-meters or a gust of wind causing a bit of data to go missing.

  4. Re:In other news, Apple is happy. by Peach+Rings · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That was a really stupid quote too:

    The ubiquitous antenna was all the buzz last week as Apple tried to squelch the latest glitch in its popular iPhone. But those antenna issues have nothing on the renovations NASA is taking on to reinvigorate its 70-meter-wide (230-foot-wide) "Mars antenna."

    X will get us better search rankings. But x has nothing to do with this story, which involves...