Don't know for soviet ones but the shuttle has bring back to earth a few things.
One was a satellite to test the effects of space environment to different materials. It was supposed to stay in orbit for 6 month, stayed there 2 years.
There are application that can be done with a series of small satellite. Like radar imagery. One who send the pulse the other to receive its echo.
You replace meters long antena with small satellites.
You can also have a global view of the world looking at several place at the same time. Cluster is a 4 pieces mission, with smaller and cheaper S/C you can extend this concept.
What is more interesting is the technology that has to be developed. Small truster, small earthy/S/C link,...
Also to be cheap, such mission must have minimal human intervention to send command, check S/C status, flight dynamics calculation,... The S/C must have a lot of autonomy.
At a first approximation, you can make the calculation with several 2 bodies system. 1 of which is the spacecraft, Not Mars and Earth.
You get ~ 3 orbits 1)around earth, 2)around the sun (to go from the earth orbit to the Mars Orbit) and 3) around Mars.
Then you have to make sure that the orbits interconnect, take into account all those pesky perturbations (moon, sun, Jupiter, mars atmosphere,...) and the limitations of your spacecraft.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't know for soviet ones but the shuttle has bring back to earth a few things. One was a satellite to test the effects of space environment to different materials. It was supposed to stay in orbit for 6 month, stayed there 2 years.
There are application that can be done with a series of small satellite. Like radar imagery. One who send the pulse the other to receive its echo. You replace meters long antena with small satellites. You can also have a global view of the world looking at several place at the same time. Cluster is a 4 pieces mission, with smaller and cheaper S/C you can extend this concept. What is more interesting is the technology that has to be developed. Small truster, small earthy/S/C link, ...
Also to be cheap, such mission must have minimal human intervention to send command, check S/C status, flight dynamics calculation, ... The S/C must have a lot of autonomy.
At a first approximation, you can make the calculation with several 2 bodies system. 1 of which is the spacecraft, Not Mars and Earth.
You get ~ 3 orbits 1)around earth, 2)around the sun (to go from the earth orbit to the Mars Orbit) and 3) around Mars.
Then you have to make sure that the orbits interconnect, take into account all those pesky perturbations (moon, sun, Jupiter, mars atmosphere, ...) and the limitations of your spacecraft.
http://www.openraw.org/ OpenRAW is a group of photographers and other interested people advocating the open documentation of digital camera RAW files.