Mostly right, but you are wrong when you call the Beagle 2 an ESA product. Mars Express is, but Beagle 2 is a privately funded UK project. It was created by professor Colin Pillinger and a whole bunch of volunteers. From what I can make out from the briefings that I've seen, Colin is an exceptional guy, and it breaks my heart to see his puppy sitting on Mars, unresponsive. So far...
The craft was made against all odds on a shoestring budget, in record time, and within crazy weight limits. Because of the weight constraints several backup and/or extra communications systems could not be added. Anyone who compares this lander to Pathfinder, the MER's, or any other NASA project is out of his mind...
The PHB's are gonna love this response at Groklaw:)
Here is the letter from SCO warning recipients of alleged copyright violations. I must tell you that the list of files has everyone I am hearing from falling on the floor laughing. We will be issuing a statement explaining why as soon as they recover.
At 9:31 CET, ESA's ground control team at Darmstadt (Germany) will send the command for the Beagle 2 lander to separate from Mars Express. A pyrotechnic device will be fired to slowly release a loaded spring, which will gently push Beagle 2 away from the mother spacecraft.
Data on the spacecraft's position and speed will be used by mission engineers to assess whether the lander was successfully released. In addition, the onboard Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) should provide an image showing the lander slowly moving away. The image is expected to be available mid-afternoon.
You are right, I was the one jumping to conclusions. I pretty much skipped the rest of your post when I concluded (wrongly) that you didn't see that post. I'll RTFC better:)
There was a "It's called faith, pal. Something you obviously lack. May Jesus have mercy on your soul." in between. Better to read *all* replies before you jump to a conclusion and even get modded up for it...
Plus: Stardust was designed to be light. That is also the reason for the several gravity assists during the mission: it allowed for a lighter spacecraft and thus a smaller launcher.
Maybe something could be done with aerobraking, but I guess that too would take a very long time to match orbits.
Companies server receives the unique ID. Sysadmin: "Hey, Fred just logged in, but his machine was stolen. WTF? Hmm.. what IP did his request come from? Aaaah.. 69.69.69.69. Let's do a lookup.. hey.. it seems to be an AOL modem-pool". Company goes to police, policy goes to judge, police show credible evidence that a crime was committed, judge gives warrant, AOL gives info (login account or the phonenumber that was dialed in from) on who was logged in at that time on that modem in that modempool. Police goes to address, takes laptop, returns it to Fred, jails crook. Fred: "1337!".
The app would typically send some kind of unique ID to a server, which can then be used to find the machine's current ip adress. Then a quick look through the ISP's logs, and maybe a call to a telco, and voila, we have the address (if no anonymizing proxies or whatever are used). I think you owe leerpm an apology, and deserve a couple of "-1 flamebaits".
Define serious damage... Here is an article describing the effects of space debris on the Hubble space telescope. It seems only an antenna was really damaged.
A google search for hull repair kits gave me nothing useful, does anyone else know if such a thing has been developed for the ISS?
Bacteria survived being on the moon for years. Parts from (IIRC) a Surveyor probe were brought back by an Apollo mission. Granted, these bacteria were found inside an instrument, but since the Japanese probe may shatter on impact there is a contamination risk, I think.
About the reentry, I'm not sure it will burn up completely. Meteorites crashing on Earth are said to be warm, not scalding hot. Could some rocket scientist jump in and give his view on the reentry? Metal vs stone, Earth vs Mars atmosphere? (Hmm.. re-entry sounds wrong. It's going to enter the Mars atmosphere for the first time)
Hmm... and then there was purge, to reclaim all that used diskspace. IIRC, you ran "purge -all", and suddenly all those embarrassing filenames that you thought were safely deleted run across the screen while your SO is watching over your shoulder... Great way to learn how to quickly switch to another DesqView screen:)
Spirit Lands: January 3, 2004 between 8-9 pm PST
Opportunity Lands: January 24, 2004 between 8-9 pm PST
From the rover homepage. Also check the Athena science package homepage, and read the news archives to get an idea of how much work went into the instruments alone.
Slashdot Mirror
The craft was made against all odds on a shoestring budget, in record time, and within crazy weight limits. Because of the weight constraints several backup and/or extra communications systems could not be added. Anyone who compares this lander to Pathfinder, the MER's, or any other NASA project is out of his mind...
Oh wait...
Just a quick FYI: the actual landing site name is Isidis Planitia. (Don't click the resources link unless you like pink...)
You are right, I was the one jumping to conclusions. I pretty much skipped the rest of your post when I concluded (wrongly) that you didn't see that post. I'll RTFC better :)
There was a "It's called faith, pal. Something you obviously lack. May Jesus have mercy on your soul." in between. Better to read *all* replies before you jump to a conclusion and even get modded up for it...
Forget inner-earth, show me the way to middle-earth!
Parent is correct, please mod up so the +2 readers can learn of this truth :)
Maybe something could be done with aerobraking, but I guess that too would take a very long time to match orbits.
I'm not an American, but I'd think that "AOL tells Fred the phone number." would not happen without some kind of warrant.
Companies server receives the unique ID. Sysadmin: "Hey, Fred just logged in, but his machine was stolen. WTF? Hmm.. what IP did his request come from? Aaaah.. 69.69.69.69. Let's do a lookup.. hey.. it seems to be an AOL modem-pool". Company goes to police, policy goes to judge, police show credible evidence that a crime was committed, judge gives warrant, AOL gives info (login account or the phonenumber that was dialed in from) on who was logged in at that time on that modem in that modempool. Police goes to address, takes laptop, returns it to Fred, jails crook. Fred: "1337!".
The app would typically send some kind of unique ID to a server, which can then be used to find the machine's current ip adress. Then a quick look through the ISP's logs, and maybe a call to a telco, and voila, we have the address (if no anonymizing proxies or whatever are used). I think you owe leerpm an apology, and deserve a couple of "-1 flamebaits".
That's true.
No, it's not . Hmm... on second thought, it may be true that he didn't think it, but you can't know that :-)
A google search for hull repair kits gave me nothing useful, does anyone else know if such a thing has been developed for the ISS?
In Soviet Russia the lord rings you!
About the reentry, I'm not sure it will burn up completely. Meteorites crashing on Earth are said to be warm, not scalding hot. Could some rocket scientist jump in and give his view on the reentry? Metal vs stone, Earth vs Mars atmosphere? (Hmm.. re-entry sounds wrong. It's going to enter the Mars atmosphere for the first time)
They made KDE and Gnome look the same.
Hmm... and then there was purge, to reclaim all that used diskspace. IIRC, you ran "purge -all", and suddenly all those embarrassing filenames that you thought were safely deleted run across the screen while your SO is watching over your shoulder... Great way to learn how to quickly switch to another DesqView screen :)
So no chance of fitting Lance Bass in there?
The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity do have a microscopic imager on board.
Ten monkeys, five hours.
Spirit Lands: January 3, 2004 between 8-9 pm PST
Opportunity Lands: January 24, 2004 between 8-9 pm PST
From the rover homepage. Also check the Athena science package homepage, and read the news archives to get an idea of how much work went into the instruments alone.
1. Pay users to use product from competitors 2. Profit! 3. ???
He's with Microsoft, not Sun...