Mars Climate Orbiter AWOL

Moose2000 writes " The BBC reports that NASA has lost contact with the Mars Climate Orbiter. If it doesn't get back in touch, it's not just the immediate science stuff lost - it was supposed to stay in orbit as a communications relay for future missions too. " Communication has been lost for almost 3 hours now, it appears - so there's still hope. Update: 09/23 01:36 by H :It now appears that a steering problem may have caused it to crash into the planet.

Comments

Political fallout will kill RTGs :-(

[Tackhead]

It appears as if MCO entered orbit "too low", and burned up in the atmosphere. (85km minimum survivable altitude, ~60km expected altitude of probe). Doesn't this sound like something you've heard people worrying about before?

Scientific Reality:The ability of Mission Control to save a "too low" probe during an Earth flyby, (with the probe within a few light-seconds of the transmitter), is a hell of a lot higher than the ability of Mission Control to save a "too low" probe near Mars, (i.e. at a distance of many light-minutes). Thus, the probability of an MCO-style worst-case scenario happening to an RTG-based probe on Earth flyby (I don't recall even the most ardent eco-dude worried about the Venus flyby :-) is still negligible.

(You'll also note that I'm assuming, deliberately and incorrectly, that the dispersal of Cassini's plutonium in Earth's atmosphere would be the catastrophe the anti-nukes told us it would be. It wouldn't. Before they were banned, above-ground nuclear weapons tests had already dispersed many Cassinis' worth of plutonium into the atmosphere, and we're still alive.)

Political Reality:Unfortunately, the naive analysis, which is the only thing the media will propagate, and the only thing the politicians will understand - will read something like this: "We told you so! This is exactly what those eeeeeevil scientists said could never happen with Cassini! But we KNEW! We knew that NASA can't be trusted to fly its probes perfectly, but nobody listened to us! Well, yer gonna hafta listen now! MCO burned up in the atmosphere just like we feared Cassini would! We were right and the eeeeeevil scientists were wrong! Ban all RTGs now before NASA does this with an RTG-based probe in Earth's atmosphere!" And the politicians will obey the screaming hordes.

The loss of MCO is bad for Mars science, but not catastrophic, given the redundancy NASA is putting into its Mars program. Lots of small ships is better than one big ship. The political fallout from the preceding naive analysis of MCO's fiery demise, however, will be much longer-lived and carry a much higher price than the loss of one probe.

If we're lucky, it'll be limited to a ban on Earth flybys for any future RTG-based probes. If we're unlucky, it'll spell the end of RTGs altogether.

While you can easily explore the inner planets on solar power, and maybe even Jupiter if you're careful and advance solar technology somewaht, the mass penalty for larger-and-larger solar panels increases dramatically as you move away from the sun. If one of the side-effects of the MCO failure results in a ban on RTGs, we can basically forget about exploring the outer solar system for at least a generation (i.e. until we can come up with a better technology). That would be a major blow to space science.

Link to real time telemetry

[Gino]

I hope they manage to re-establish contact... Moments like these are the worst, racking your brains thinking of ways how to solve the problem, wondering what went wrong.

Anyway, for those interested, if they do manage to make contact again here is a link to the real time telemetry of the orbiter.

...by the pricking of my thumbs,

Cosmic Misunderstanding?

[Dave Muench]

I don't suppose NASA painted a picture of a Dove on the side of it, did they?

HELLO EARTHLINGS

[Anonymous Coward]

Please continue sending your crunchy satellites on a bi-annual schedule. This corresponds nicely to our feeding and breeding schedule. Failure to comply would be bad.

*Big Martian dude out.*

Re:Incompetent eejits

[gorilla]

Once the probe is launched, the most dangerous time is when it's manouvering - an engine can blow up, or disorient the probe so it looses contact with it's base stations, so the distance isn't really relevent at all, it's more to do with the number of course corrections required.

Obviously, it requires a much more precise heading to get into orbit around a planet than to simply flyby, and consequently the Martian probes require more course corrections than the Voyager probes did.

Also, and this factor cannot be forgotten, Voyager dates from NASA's "rich" time, when they could spend billions of dollars on a probe. These modern probes have had an order of magnitude less money spend on them. This means less redudancy, less testing, and therefore less reliablity.

Pluto is again the furthest planet out. It passed outside of Neptune's orbit last year.

IT'S LOST :(

[Enoch Root]

From Florida Today Space Online:

NASA's decade-long program to explore Mars likely suffered a major setback today with the loss of the Climate Orbiter spacecraft dispatched to understand the Red Planet's weather. Space agency officials just announced at a news conference that the satellite may have plunged into the Martian atmosphere due to a catastrophic navigation error. Ground controllers had expected the craft to pass 140 or 150 km above the planet's surface during the closest approach as MCO entered orbit around Mars this morning. However, for some reason not yet known, MCO appears to have made the closest approach at 60 km. NASA says it suspects 85 km to be the minimum altitude that the satellite could have survived. Given that fact, optimism that MCO is still alive and orbiting about Mars is now rather low. But further attempts will be made to contact the satellite until it becomes completely clear MCO did indeed crash.

A "Tiger Team" has been formed to determine how the navigation error occurred, whether it was spacecraft, software, human error or some other factor that caused the mishap.

Ah, shit.

"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."

Where did you get this? No contact at 08:55 ETD

[Gino]

I would love to believe that they've regained contact. But according to all my news sources they've not yet managed to do so! The latest update I have from Space Online is time stamped at 8:55 ETD and the news is still NO contact!

Moderators please! Don't give unfounded news items such a high score. The AC didn't even give a link to his news source!

...by the pricking of my thumbs,