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NASA Has Suspended Its Next Mission To Mars (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes: NASA has suspended its next mission to Mars after problems with a French-built seismological instrument could not be fixed in time for the scheduled launch. The mission, a lander called InSight that was to listen for tremors on Mars as a way of understanding the planet's interior, will not launch in March 2016, the agency said today. NASA has not announced a new launch date, but because of the relative orbits of Mars and Earth, the agency will have to wait at least 26 months before it can try to launch again. The troublesome instrument is called the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure; the Max Planck Institute, one of the instrument's developers, has a nice page outlining SEIS's construction and function.
Right after NASA's funding increase got signed.
Relative orbits means having Earth and Mars come together at their closet points every two years to launch a mission. Standard operating procedure for Mars missions. What about the relative orbits of Earth, Venus and Mars for an inward slingshot?
So, scientists are shaken up over the delayed seismometer mission?
Table-ized A.I.
Considering the trainwreck that was the previous mission to mars!
It seems that the CNES took out an article today saying that the instrument was repaired. See the cached content here.
It is saying that the core of the instrument is a titanium sphere keeping inner sensors in a 0.25 mbar vacuum (at most). This is about 40000x less than atmospheric pressure on earth. What they saw is that the pressure inside the sphere went up from 0 to 30 mbar in a month. They found a production defect on one of the sensors connectors going through the shell but it seems that they were able to seal it correctly with some resin. They also found a second leakage problem around the pump creating the vacuum, which could be fixed as well.
They are currently running tests to determine if everything is ok. According to the article, the launch could be re-scheduled to March 18th.
Sounds to me like they need a queue for robotic mars missions. The most expensive thing is the launch not what they are sending into space.
I sometimes wonder about that. Most people think of space as being OUTWARD from Earth.
I don't think it's a quesiton of OUTWARD/INWARD, but more about being practical and efficient.
Since Mars is in an OUTWARD orbit, our spacecraft most fly OUTWARD when Earth and Mars are at their closet points.
That also happens to be the shortest and thus fastest route between earth and venus.
I get a lot of negative comments whenever I mention a Venus flyby, which has an INWARD orbit from both Earth and Mars, but can still be used as a slingshot between the two planets.
Except that this is a much more complicated trajectory, and is a lot longer distance and will probably take a lot more time. :-D ) so I won't probably even be competent to compute if I wanted.
I'm too lazy to compute the time necessary and it's also absolutely outside of my field of work (I am a doctor, creimer! Not an asto-physicist !
At some point of time you have to ask, is better worth : ...wait 2 years for next close window ? ...wait a couple of months for the perfect earth-venus-mars alignement , then launch a probe on that trajectory, which is probably going take a year (numbers sponsored by the "out of my ass" department) ? so in the end the probe will perhaps only arrive a couple of month earlier than waiting for the next short route ?
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there's a small difference between launching a probe deep-space on a 10 years mission, were you can afford fumbling around a couple of months to take advantage of a better inward flyby. On the 10+ years of the mission, it's just small detour.
Is it better:
- take a short route which has already been taken several times in the past, and that we know works well ?
- take a newer much longer route, more complex, where the slighest deviation is going to have a much bigger impact at the end ?
Getting to Mars is not trivial. Before the current strike of successful landings, there has been a long string of failed attempts. Replacing this with a much more complex and longer route is bound to have more hiccups.
Is it better:
- to spend only a few months between earth and mars ?
- to spend ~N year(s) (according to OOMA dept.) while at the same time coming as close as venus ?
This is a delivery mission. The point is to drop some delicate equipment on the Martian surface and start doing measures there ASAP.
It's not a mission about recording as much stuff in space as possible. (although it will probably be done but as a secondary goal).
The less time the equipment spends outside of the protection of planetary magnetic fields, the less time that it spends in direct exposition to solar radiation, the better.
Replacing a short earth-mars trip with a much longer earth-venus-mars trip dramatically increases the risk that your payload happens to get fried by excessive solar radiation.
And last and not list ?
- Is it better to rush things to be ready for the next earth-venus-mars alignement ?
- Take 2 years to make the seimic equipement ready, polished and reliable ?
For fuck's sake: it's *France* we're speaking about, not *Sweeden*. Do no mix them. Both countries happen to work less than 36 hours a week. BUT only the second one actually gets things done. The first one has a massive tendency to consider "on strike"/"public demonstrations" as a soft of national sport.
The time waiting until the next direct earth-mars window give more headroom to the project to be finished on time.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
> but because of the relative orbits of Mars and Earth, the agency will have to wait at least 26 months before it can try to launch again
*opens ksp*
Checks out.
(Read like "Marsha".)
Is this the NASA channel or something? Can we please stop posting stories made by known liars? At least add some content from TheNASAChannel: https://www.youtube.com/user/T...
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Lol yhe French again . Never buyfrench products or tech .
>> NASA Has Suspended Its Next Mission To Mars (sciencerag)
What, they canceled the virtual one?
http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/12/21/2235210/nasa-is-creating-a-virtual-reality-mission-to-mars
When reached for comments NASA said "We wanted to fix the problem, but every time we called France they were on a mandatory work break and they had gone over there 5 hour a week work week schedule already!"
ah. AMightyWind, the true blow hard, is back at his normal trolling.
It's called democracy, you unutterable twat.
I would call it "getting on everyone else's nerves.
Would you like to live somewhere that banned all forms of dissent against our corporate overlords? There's a word for that sort of system.
No, I very much would like somewhere where there is *direct* democracy.
(Which by the way, I do.)
Means that the actual population is really in charge, and does have the last say on anything through voting.
In a direct democracy, when you're un-happy with something, instead of doing completely shitty counter-productive things like strikes and public demonstrations (things that mainly ends-up in pissing everyone), you simply exercice your right to vote for/against the things that bother you.
If you want something to change, you (and I main any random *you* in the population, not a special class of easily corruptible politician like in representative democracies) just make a proposal and gather the necessary amount of signatures.
Yup, any random individual can influence the government if they manage to gather enough public attention.
If nobody signs your proposal, means that nobody gives a fuck about it. Either you're a deep failure at communication (maybe you should hire someone to help you) or more likely, nobody gives a shit about your problems.
At which point, instead of pissing everyone, just quit you job and move to something you're more comfortable with.
Worst part of this? France actually does have laws regarding public initiative... they are just not used to exercising them.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
In France, we work 35h per week, which is the maximum legal work time before making overtime. For my last temporary job ( yeah, difficult times... ), I've worked 4 monthes, and, for each month, had 35h of overtime, and fortunately get paid in consequences ( because most of employers don't pay it, or doesn't allow overtime for a few of them to avoid having to pay it ). So, before telling anything wrong, and before to imply that we are just a bunch of lazy people, just get informed. Ps : we are not the country with the most vacations in Europe, actually, we got 25 days per year of paid holidays and 11 days of public holidays, this class us just at fifth position in all Europe, after Austria, Malta, Greece, Poland and ex aequo with Spain.