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.

Comments

Re:a collision wouldn't surprise me

[Tim the Gecko]

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.

Re:NASA/ESA Astronomy News Sites?

[phrostie]

Universe Today

http://www.universetoday.com/1...

Re:a collision wouldn't surprise me

[MindStalker]

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.

Maven success

[Dan East]

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.

Re:NASA/ESA Astronomy News Sites?

[Ford Prefect]

The Planetary Society also has decent in-depth coverage of (usually unmanned) spaceflight.