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2 Mars Missions Set For Arrival, Both Prepare for Orbital Maneuvers
As reported by the BBC, NASA's Maven Mars orbiter has nearly reached the red planet, and will undergo a 33-minute rocket burn to slow its course.
Monday's big manoeuvre on Maven's engines will place the satellite in a high, elliptical, 35-hour orbit around the planet. Confirmation of capture should be received on Earth shortly after 0220 GMT (2220 EDT Sunday; 0320 BST). "We should have a preliminary answer within just a few minutes after the end of the burn," said [principal investigator professor Bruce] Jakosky. In the coming weeks, engineers will then work to bring Maven into a regular 4.5-hour, operational orbit that takes the probe as close as 150km to Mars but also sends it out to 6,200km.
India's first mission to Mars faces a critical test as it does a similar maneuver -- firing of a rocket to slow its travel as it approaches Mars orbit.
What are some of the best astronomy-specific news sites? I know that each individual agency has their own news sites, but would like to find a site that gathers everything in one place.
For somw reason, it wouldn't surprise me if these two craft collided, despite being the only two approaching the entire planet. It just seems that any time a government spends a lot of money to do anything, it normally ends with a fail worthy of Monty Python .
There's a lot of exciting stuff happening right now. The Dawn mission is on its way to get a close look at Ceres in April next year. Rosetta is sending a lander onto a comet (which is about to do the exciting thing for comets - i.e. go near the sun). New Horizons is going to fly past Pluto next July. There are two rovers exploring Mars. Not to mention Cassini, Messenger, etc. You can be negative if you like, but I think these missions are pretty amazing.
I'm having trouble remembering the last time two gov't funded space exploration vehicles collided. Oh wait, you were just trying to appear clever but collided with fail.
First Martian traffic event, woohoo! Granted, it is not a red or even an orange in the google-map traffic scale, but still...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
[At JPL] Mission Control: OK .... Who forgot the fuck'n Peanuts!
[At JPL] Mission Crew: Everyone stops. Everyone looks around: kinda ... questioning looks. [A long pause.] Then, grad student intern returns from 7-11 (Oh Thank Heaven) with Planters Peanuts. Mission Controllers rise from their seats to give a round of applause and high-fives to the grad student intern.
[At JPL] Mission Control: JPL Sub-stage mission accomplished. NASA, we are GO for orbital insertion.
What odds are the Vegas odd-makers giving on a collision above Mars? I hope they don't use GEICO.
http://mars.nasa.gov/maven/
Five press releases in the last six days:
http://mars.nasa.gov/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1711
http://mars.nasa.gov/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1710
http://mars.nasa.gov/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1709
http://mars.nasa.gov/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1708
http://mars.nasa.gov/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1707
You are an idiot...of course, you did post AC. If the moon landings were false, the USSR, our main adversary at the time, would have busted us. How would you spoof radio signals from the moon, or in transit ? You can't. First tier nations, as well as motivated radio amateurs, could receive it all... Go find a site to climate deny.
No, if the two probes fell in love, a jibbering Roman god poked at them with a spear, the whole lot were then swallowed by a cross between a police constable and a space hopper, followed by dramatic music and a cut to a documentary about historical figures knitting, then it would be worthy of Monty Python.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
While it could happen (technically almost anything can happen in an infinite universe), it is far more likely that the Swedish Women's Volleyball team will burst into your room in the next five seconds and give you death by snu-snu.
~33 mo' minutes for insertion!
You have no idea about how big the vastness of space is. The chance of them colliding is like the chance of two bullets being fired in a high arc across New York city, and them colliding. Sure that chance happens once per orbit, but its simply not going to happen especially as they both will eventually establish stable orbits that simply will never cross.
Easy, you just have to send a couple of guys, let's call them Neil and Buzz, to set up equipment to reflect the signal :)
OK, so it's just to reflect lasers, but that's close enough for a bad joke.
For an added bonus have one of them so on top of things that he's able to calculate burns for a transfer orbit when the computer is down.
...what if they collided, and both missions suddenly failed?
OK, I'd have to admit that would be kind of hilarious (setting aside the decades of work and hundreds of millions of $$ invested).
-Styopa
The burn was successful and Maven is in orbit. It looks like the engines were under-performing in some way though and they will have to tweak the orbit some as a result.
Better known as 318230.
The point went right over your head, didn't it. The odds of that happening are astronomical, literally. Yet, it wouldn't be all that surprising if a government agency still managed to screw it up, against all odds - to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Also, you might want to check out Monty Python sometime.
The feared killer rabbit is a favorite. Encountering a killer rabbit, and being forced to defend yourself with the Holy Hand Grenade, is approximately as likely as said collision. Hence the Monty Python reference. Yet governments do indeed fight "holy wars", presumably with holy hand grenades, because nothing is too ridiculous for a government.
In what ways do you think Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity are failures?
Or do you even know what I'm talking about without using google?
After a 10-month journey through deep space, NASA's MAVEN probe arrived in Mars orbit late Sunday (Sept. 21), on a mission to help scientists figure out why the Red Planet changed from a relatively warm and wet place in the ancient past to the cold, arid world it is today.
MAVEN, whose name is short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, fired its engines in a crucial 30-minute braking burn Sunday night, slowing down enough to be captured by the planet's gravity around 10:24 p.m. EDT (0224 GMT Monday, Sept. 22).
http://www.space.com/27217-nas...
Two interplanetary orbital insertions, an ISS crew swap, and an ISS cargo delivery.
Yes, I'll take that!
Do we need yet more headlines that say "Mars may have supported life one billion years ago"?
Not EVERYTHING the government does us a total failure, of course.
They do tend to fail in comic ways, and often spectacularly. Mars climate orbiter, anyone? Robin Williams did a great bit about that.
Do you REALLY want to argue the position that governments aren't prone to ridiculous screwups? You can point to a couple of projects that ended up working. On the other side are thousands of projects and trillions of dollars that all ended in utter fail. The entire Bush II administration- mostly fail. His successor- again mostly fail, as evidenced by his approval ratings in the 30%s.
For those who don't quite understand that "worthy of Monty Python " implies something ridiculous, so improbable as to be almost beyond imagination, let mw get serious for a moment.
They will not collide because the only time they will be "near" each other they'll be at very different altitudes from the Martian surface. One will be 10,000 meters above the surface while the other is 33,000 feet above. Veteran scientists who worked on the Mars climate orbiter have confirmed this is plenty of separation between the two.
Dont worry, Jeb Kerman is on board so all is well.
Why is the US probe Maven so much more expensive than Indian Mangalyaan? 650+ million (485project cost+187launch costs) USD vs 74 million USD. How is US going to compete with anyone if everything done here costs nearly 10 times more?
It just seems that any time a government spends a lot of money to do anything, it normally ends with a fail worthy of Monty Python.
So, had you had the chance, you'd have volunteered to observe The Gadget exploding from the base of its tower? I mean, it's going to fail anyway, right?
Ezekiel 23:20
It was either April 15 or April 16, 2005. (I'm not sure about the exact time of day.)
Ezekiel 23:20
And the more orbiters we'll send to Mars, the more likely it will become. Although obviously, that's only a qualitative statement; it would take a lot of time to reach the dangerous point.
Ezekiel 23:20
What, this one? An autonomous rendezvous test satellite that bashed into the derelict satellite it was practising with?
I mean, the whole point of that mission was to get close, tho not quite that close.
It just seems that any time a government spends a lot of money to do anything, it normally ends with a fail worthy of Monty Python
Lets be fair here, the last thing they did on Mars was place a 1 ton nuclear powered tank on the surface using a rocket powered crane, so they've obviously come along way since that unfortunate units mixup...
Report just in that the Indian Mars Orbiter has successfully test-fired its engine and has entered the Martian gravitational sphere of influence: http://www.isro.org/mars/updat... http://indianexpress.com/artic...
NASA has spent/allocated $5B to Mars alone (Curiosity, Maven, Insight,MSL-2) and claims it has no money for Europa.
A pathetic, unscientific distribution of scarce funds.
News coming in that India's Mangalyaan has successfully test fired it's Liquid Apogee Motor (congratulations) and so a possible collision with MAVEN is very much infinitesimally probable :-)
Too bad I can't watch it from my 8 inch dob.
423 million miles / $75 million = 5.6 mi / $ = not bad!
in the dark?
I think we should launch a whole bunch of satellites to monitor orbital debris. >_>
Agreed, the robotic missions are doing very well on Mars and on their future landing sites I expect some pretty cool data coming back.
Thank goodness for that - otherwise, the Indian mission would have never made it.
in which case the US would have busted the USSR for faking the first manned space-flight with Vostok 1. According to the way-out there conspirators anyhow.
> You would think people would learn after the "Moon landing" video that was produced in a studio. On Planet Earth.
Boy, what an ignorant fellah are you!
Hot on the heels of MAVEN, India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) or Mangalyaan (Mars-vehicle), has also successfully been inserted into it's planned orbit after its Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) fired as expected. With this India becomes the first Asian nation to successfully send a Mars mission, and the first nation in the world to taste Martian success in its very first attempt. Don't worry, there won't be a collision between the two probes, we drive on opposite lanes... remember!