Mars Polar Lander Remains Silent 205
dante773 writes "ABCNews is reporting the Mars Polar Lander has missed it's primary windows of opprotunity to signal Earth. They still have a few options left to establish contact, though. Hopefully this isn't another failed Mars mission." Other sites carrying regular updates on the Mars Polar Lander that you might to check in with now and then: Offical Mars Polar Lander site; Discovery Channel's continuing coverage.
NASA - New Accident Says Aliens (Score:1)
Martian Air Force (Score:3)
However... (Score:2)
Re:However... (Score:1)
Now, whether that's good or bad, I don't know ;)
It still is not time to worry (Score:4)
They are still trying to contact the lander on X-Band, but there is still a UHF radio on board and there is still the matter of redundant radios, plus the little matter that the lander will start swapping out it's own components after six days of not getting commands from Earth. There is still a long way to go before one can start being worried.
Mars probe failsafes (Score:4)
So don't give up hope for a few weeks.
(Score:1)
Could be double the trouble of Hubble...
======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Quite obvious... (Score:3)
If we STOP sending things over there, then maybe we can starve them out. Maybe we should try some sub-atmospheric observance? That way we could keep tabs on them until the died of starvation, then start sending things back over.
Well, sounds good to me at least...
Oh God... *SAFE MODE* (Score:3)
*Drivers Version
***WARNING: FILE NOT FOUND: MPLRLNDR.VXD***
***CANNOT CONTINUE BOOT SEQUENCE***
---Press F1 to continue booting in *SAFE* mode---
Next we'll have to launch a microsoft tech to Mars... grrrrr
I wonder... (Score:1)
I'd say it is, but to take a look at what has happened recently: The metric conversion hulabaloo ("probe lost"), some malfunctioning electronic gadget with the Mars Observer ("probe lost"), antenna deployment malfunction with Galileo ("less information"), Russian Mars probe exploded after takeoff ("probe lost") and whatnot. All these are recent events from the top of my head, there might be more.
Following the footsteps of Spock and Tuvok: "There are two possibilities: there's something out there or there is nothing out there." IMO in either case the people of Earth deserve to know, even if it means admitting to the fact that new technology sucks. If NASA found aliens from Mars most people wouldn't give a damn anyway, they'd be too worried with their jobs, taxes, finding food and all sorts of everyday problems.
As a side note: is it possible to receive spacecraft signals other than in with huge NASA antennae? Is this feasible? Or does the data always have to go through some preset channel before it pops up in the media?
Smaller, Cheaper, Better? (Score:3)
Re:No contact? (Score:2)
and we all know what OS has a Safe Mode.
At least the probe seems to be able to do things while in its safe mode, as opposed to Windows Safe Mode.
Rename it Useless Mode I say.
iain
Re:Quite obvious... (Score:1)
Actually I think we're sending over these probes and the Martians are using them as a kind of intergalactic MindStorm set.
Andrew
Re:It still is not time to worry (Score:1)
Rajiv Varma
Re:However... (Score:2)
Lewis to Clark: "Man, why do you want to go walking around there??? Nothing but trees and Indians I tell ye!"
I don't know. Maybe I'm in the minority because I see value in exploring precisely because we don't know exactly what we will find. I tend to think that civilizations stagnate when they practice isolationism and don't explore the frontier...
Manifest Destiny...Manifest Destiny...Manifest Destiny.
Re:Oh God... *SAFE MODE* (Score:2)
Now, if only they could file patents from Mars, there'd be an excuse to send some patent lawyers up as well...
Success/Failure (Score:3)
There is a secondary method of communication through Mars Orbiter, that can be made with relatively insignificant effort, after Mars Orbiter finishes communication with two other probes over there right now. This secondary method of communication will relay various signals through the orbiter back to earth, and should such a signal make it, we will likely discover the problem with the primary direct-link comminication method.
Statistically, Americans have been successiful in probing Mars, losing about 1/3rd of their probes into deep space. Of all the (albeit relatively few) Russian attempts, not a single probe made it to Mars and completed it's mission.
Through trial and error, we will eventually come to minimize failures. Automation and higher-level logic/understanding on the parts of the probes is necessary, but perhaps more important than that is the intercommunication between probes, that allows dependence on prior successes to help reduce failures in the future.
Future of NASA? (Score:2)
This would be like shooting ducks in a barrel. People in the up and up positions like to have the chance to get returns on investments they make so0 they can get re-elected. I think it may be time to do more advertizing on their rocksts ad such.
Hmm.. a red hat logo is the first thing that the martians see.
Re:It still is not time to worry (Score:2)
Re:However... (Score:1)
Rajiv Varma
There are a lot of things that need to be overcome (Score:1)
All the lighter gases like oxygen and nitrogen evaporated off of the planet long ago. We would need to produce a lot of oxygen constantly in order for mars to sustain life.
Temperature gradients play hell there too, on the surface, the difference in temperature between your feet and chest would be 15 degrees C.
There is a possible scenario for the terraforming of Mars at:
http://personalwebs.myriad.net/tgunn/teraform.h
I haven't read through the entire thing yet, but it seems to be pretty interesting.
All things considered, I think it may be easer to try to convert the atmosphere of Venus to something more suitable to us, as its mass is much closer to ours, although I haven't actually done any research into it, and I am very far from being a chemist with the knowledge required to change the atmosphere of an entire freaking planet =).
Th Impact Probes . . (Score:5)
This lander consists of 3 landing vehicles. The main landing vehicle (which they tried to communicate with last night) was suppose to make a 'soft touchdown' on the mars south pole. This main lander has a high gain communications sub-system that was suppose to land, and contact earth 20 minutes after touchdown.
After this failed, they sent out a signal to ask the main lander to 'raster' it's high gain across a large area of the sky (sending a signal out, then turn 5 degrees, then send another). sooner or later, in theory, the high gain would eventually align itself with earth, and lock on.
This procedure, so far, did not produce the desired results.
What's more disturbing is, while the main vehicle was descending, it split off 2 small 'impact probes' that were going to impact the mars surface at ballistic speed and dig into the mars soil.
The impact probes have there own UHF communications sub-system and act independently of the main lander. The impact probes (with a much weaker UHF ) relay there signals through the orbiting surveyor that passes overhead every 2 hours.
What's disturbing to me about this development is that even if the main landers high gain has it's own problems, the 2 impact probes act completely independent of the main lander, and should be able to relay there signals home.
What are the odds of both the main lander, and the impact probes having communications problems at the same time? Very slim. This leads me to believe that perhaps there was a problem during decent.
When the mars rover (remember that little dune buggy lookin thing?) descended into the atmosphere of mars, it send out a 'beacon' signal as it descended (allowing everyone here to track it's decent in real time). This decent of the polar lander was done in 'radio silence' thus, we have no telemetry on the decent and landing an any of the 3 landing vehicles.
It's my hope that the dedicated efforts of the many skilled people on the team pays off, and the rest of the mission is nominal.
It is also my hope that (because they are the only ones that have proven results for there work) the mission planers and engineers that did the "Mars Rover" mission get promoted, and there ideas get more funding, attention and authority.
Maybe the Martians don't like being probed (Score:3)
Why didn't it bounce? (Score:1)
Hmmm... Shot down? (Score:1)
"BWRRRRP!! ZZZZZPT! HAHA! We got another one! Hey, BLappht***ty! Can you use that one for a car or a spine massager?"
The 2001 Connection (Score:1)
This whole thing reminds one of 2001. Probes and spacecraft "disappearing" into space, the recent metric/english conversion problems. Yah right! That's the kind of stuff that college freshmen mess up on, not NASA scientists. This is a conspiracy.
Something is up there and they know it. NASA lost a $1 billion ship up there in 1993. Do people actually believe that? Something has been found and the government doesn't want us to know. Why would NASA face the critisism it has just to keep a secret? Easy, they're a government agency, they made a deal to retain a constant stream of funding. Those blustering Senators who want to cut NASA's budget are hapless pawns in the hands of the NSA, CIA, MI8 (or whatever it is now), Red China, ex-KBG officers, Saudi secret service, and Red Hat operatives.
Engineering Axiom.. (Score:1)
Good
Fast
Cheap
Pick any Two
-- cary
Remember.... (Score:1)
Rajiv Varma
Re:I wonder... (Score:2)
Because in the 50s, 60s and 70s, NASA could spend enough money to do these things right.
$150 - $200 million simply may not be enough to guarantee success for a Mars Probe. Engineering for space is enormously complicated and expensive. You need to use much better parts, the system engineering is harder, the software engineer is much, much harder, the testing, the analysis, etc etc are all far beyond what we as a culture seem able (or willing) to pay for.
But these are the years of the Great Navelgazing. Investors will gladly throw billions of dollars at "web startups" that have yet to show a profit, or any significant advancements to technology... but not one penny for the future of the species. In a cultural climate like this, NASA is lucky to get even the few scraps that Congress is begrudgingly willing to throw it.
The fact is that failures like this will continue to happen until something changes.
Murphy's Law? (Score:1)
Although Murphy's Law does state that the further away a computer is from humans, the more likely it is to hang on a reboot. (Which explains why whenever you restart a computer over the network, it never comes back up ;)
"Your computer was not properly shutdown. Press return to run scandisk on your drives."
Better send that technician.
We'll be pushing 10 billion people before too long (Score:3)
Colonizing space and neighboring planets is the best way to insure humanity's long-term survival. We'll also have to go interstellar eventually, as even the sun won't live forever.
a slight miscalculation (Score:1)
Go Figure Duh! (Score:1)
Its hencho en mexico electronics just couldnt take the shock.Therefore it comes as no surprise to me
that sophisticated electronics after going through
severals Gs of launch force,the harsh environment of space and crashing into a planet wont send a
puny radio signal all the way to earth the first time its called.
Re:"Aliens" are more likely to be microorganisms. (Score:2)
The question is which would adapt faster. My guess would be the Mars pathogens.
Re:Moderators: Shoot to kill (Score:1)
Re:Go Figure Duh! (Score:1)
Machines let us down again (Score:1)
Re:Smaller, Cheaper, Better? (Score:1)
Who's going to fund them?
They're not doing the "cheaper" part of this by choice. People just don't care when NASA's budget gets cut.
Besides, I'm more interested in the outcome of DS2 from a "smaller, cheaper, better" perspective.
Cmon, most people can't write an OS that doesn't crash under certian circumstances. I find it amazing that ANY space missions work. We're going to shoot your computer 100,000,000 miles away and everything has to function perfectly and you have to plan for EVERY eventuallity. Oh, and we cut your budget by 20% and you contractor is using english measurements (due to some apparent stupidity) and...
I'm impressed that anything works.
Re:Why didn't it bounce? (Score:1)
Re:However... (Score:1)
Next time (Score:1)
and MANY more (Score:1)
So much fer cheapness. (Score:2)
More good coverage... (Score:3)
Yes. (Score:1)
As I said, think about evolution (without which there would be no life). It depends on most (or at least a large portion) of the beings dying before they can reproduce. And everything is 'designed' to do that at all costs. So for conscious beings everything that could cause death is generating extreme suffering. Therefore (almost) everyone suffers, a lot. And that's bad.
I hate most movies. I possibly think to much about ethics...
ajpace@ieng9.ucsd.edu (Score:2)
It's deScent, damn it, not deCent! (Score:1)
The MPL attempted to make a DESCENT into a DESERT, not a DECENT into a DESSERT. Got it?
Talk sense, for goodness sake! Thank you.
Ick. (Score:1)
Mars Global Surveyor (Score:1)
Now, is the resolution of the Global Surveyor great enough that it could see the Lander?
I remember hearing that Mars was mapped out better than Earth (Might have been Venus, might have been both.) It would be *very* interesting if we could see a new picture of the landing site, with/without the lander.
Adam
Re: $150 - $200 million simply may not be enough.. (Score:1)
Smaller, Cheaper, Better? (Score:2)
Re:Smaller, Cheaper, Better? (Score:1)
Re:We'll be pushing 10 billion people before too l (Score:1)
Hmm... colonizing Mars, eh? Colonizing those planets out there that we only see as wobbles in their parent star right now. My question is, will humanity even last that long for technology to take us there??? Humanity might have collapsed under the weight of its own problems before that time comes.
In His Image (Score:1)
>people wouldn't give a damn anyway,
>they'd be too worried with their jobs,
>taxes, finding food and all sorts of
>everyday problems.
Actually, I disagree. I think (and agree with the many who've said it before me, this is by no means an original thought), that the discovery of life somewhere else may well be one of the larger ticking time bombs there is for *Christians*. Now, while admittedly, the world is much larger than Christianity; in America, all sorts of hubbub could erupt....and all from one little line. "Made in his image". The chances of life elsewhere being (as in Star Trek) just like us, with a funky thing on the forehead, is really *not* a reality. And it will lead to all sorts of questions that for people who are used to NOT questioning.
I'm all for it. Shake them suckers up.
I do have to admit, ludicrious as it is, I keep thinking of Ray Bradbury's MARTIAN CHRONICALS and how the martians kept earth away for so long, when I read things like this
Moderate this up! (Score:2)
-AS
Re:Why didn't it bounce? (Score:1)
I remember reading in some article after the probe was in flight that there was concern that the pulsing might cause irregular fuel flow that would make landing even more difficult, but I never heard any followup.
Why space travel won't happen anytime soon (Score:1)
... is because of accidents/failures like this. Although everybody loves space travel, colonizing other planets, and all that, the economic nightmares occurring on Earth will stop it all. NASA is already short on funding, and one more Mars mission failure like this one may provoke the government to finally cut off funding for NASA. After all, their political agenda was already fulfilled decades ago when NASA put men on the moon. Today, I think people are more worried about economic crisis, job insecurity, and other Earthly troubles than whether it's possible to colonize another planet. Today people have been reduced mostly to either trying to survive, or, on the other side of the spectrum, how to take advantage of their competitive edge to line their pockets more. Nobody has time to worry about better, higher things.
Reasons to Explore Mars (Score:3)
If there's no water on Mars, and colonization is the prime goal of our exploration there, then we might as well colonize the moon first. Cheaper, closer, and all the alumninum we want.
What makes the exploration of Mars so interesting is that we don't know that there aren't actually large quantities of water there. We should really know definitively that there is no appreciable water supply there before we discount it as a possible colonization sight.
Aside from colonization, which is one hundred years away at best, there are a multitude of scientifically interesting reasons to explore Mars. [nasa.gov]
1) What caused the climate of Mars to change? Is Earth in danger of a similar change, and can we be taking steps to prevent that?
2) Did primitive life exist on Mars, and if so, how does it compare to primitive life on Earth?
3) Are there natural resources on Mars worth mining and returning to Earth?
Basically, learning about Mars gives us something to compare our study of Earth against, and may give us a source of resources (and real estate) to help us overcome our rapid depletion of Earth's resources.
Re:Th Impact Probes . . (Score:1)
IIRC, the impact probes aren't supposed to give up on the main lander for quite a while yet. The lander still has many, many opportunities to contact Earth; even if the communications systems were _all_ damaged too seriously to contact Earth (unlikely at best), the lander still has the option of swapping out its own components. Yes, they sent backups. In any event, it's hard to tell whether the impact probes survived the landing in the first place (I think they were expecting accelerations of several hundred G's, and they weren't sure whether the impact probes could survive that). The upshot of all this is, don't give up just yet. We've still got lots of chances.
Re:I wonder... (Score:1)
You mean Apollo 1, Apollo 13, Challenger, and whatnot? Not to mention all of the rockets they *tried* to get into space before the Mercury project?
their there (Score:1)
Re:Smaller, Cheaper, Better? (Score:5)
Currently, there have been 33 missions to Mars from Earth, 8 of which have been mostly sucessful. Fully two thirds of the missions to mars have been 100% unsucessful, and most of those that have returned some useful data have failed at some point earlier than expected.
If you thought the navigation error (damn those English units...) that led to the demise of the Mars Climate Orbiter was embarrassing, just remember that the Viking landers 1 and 2 were both rendered useless far before the end of their operational lifetime when the Viking 1 lander, acting as a communication relay for the other lander, was mistakenly shut down.
I think the Smaller, Cheaper, Better paradigm is a commendable one, and deserves more of a chance. Why Mars seems to be such a difficult planet to get to deserves a closer inspection as well. Our success rate in every other space endeavor has been an order of magnitude higher, but it has nothing to do with NASA's attempts to make its new spacecraft more economical.
Remember Pathfinder? (Score:3)
By the way, the Pathfinder mission cost less than it did to make a standard Hollywood big-budget blockbuster. I've seen Waterworld. Have you? We put a human-controlled rover on Mars for less money. Which do you think is the bigger waste?
Let's consider the four Better, Faster, Cheaper missions to Mars so far: the Pathfinder, the Global Surveyor, the Climate Orbiter, and the Polar Lander. Of those, two were successful, one was a failure, and one is still in doubt (though as others have said, there is no reason to believe that the Polar Lander has failed yet
NASA's on the right track. Let's just hope that the Polar Lander mission hasn't failed
Latest theory (Score:1)
I think we may see some sort of to-ground telemetry devised in the future, or more interesting protocols like:
catch (CruiseStageNotDetachedError e) {
}Poor Planning? (Score:1)
Re:We'll be pushing 10 billion people before too l (Score:1)
Also, the sun won't expand into a red giant for another 5 billion years, so we will have enough time to colonize other planets in our galaxy. I just don't think our main reason for exploring the universe should be to populate it. We should enjoy the information we can extrapolate from it.
Rajiv Varma
Re:Th Impact Probes . . (Score:1)
This seems a little misleading, given that it takes so long (14 mins?) for the radio signals to travel in each direction. So it doesn't seem likely that there'd be quick enough response time for the craft to "align itself" or "lock on" on automatically.
More likely, the JPL engineers would wait to hear something during the sweep, determine what the proper orientation was, and then send an explicit command to the lander to orient its antenna with those coordinates. In other words, JPL would know before the lander if and when the sweep crossed Earth's path.
Re:Mars probe failsafes (Score:1)
Re:The Impact Probes . . (Score:3)
This seems a little misleading, given that it takes so long (14 mins?) for the radio signals to travel in each direction. So it doesn't seem likely that there'd be quick enough response time for the craft to "align itself" or "lock on" on automatically. More likely, the JPL engineers would wait to hear something during the sweep, determine what the proper orientation was, and then send an explicit command to the lander to orient its antenna with those coordinates. In other words, JPL would know before the lander if and when the sweep crossed Earth's path.
I failed to type out the how this lock-on procedure actually works. It is very time consuming. Usually the high gain will raster from horizon to horizon and keep repeating, until it recieves an explicit command from JPL telling it where earth is.
I just hope the thing isn't upside down in a ditch somewhere. :)
Mars is the only planet that can be colonized (Score:5)
For the other planets:
Mercury is so close to the sun that it fills most of the sky, a major bummer if you try to live on surface.
Venus is a hot oven full of high pressure poisonous gasses. No landers on it survived very long, despite extreemly rugged construction.
Earth is already taken.
The outer planets are gas giants, except for Pluto which is too far away and *really* cold. Some of the moons might be inhabitable, but traveltimes are impractically long.
Which leaves us the moon, mars and the asteroid belt.
By space standards, Mars is actually quite attractive. It's day is close enough to 24 hours that we'd able to adapt. There is an atmosphere, although an extreemly thin one and mostly CO2. But you can get oxygen out of CO2, compress in to get 3psi pressure and fill a 60s style bubble with it. If you can get a good source of water you have most of the resources to support life in those bubbles. If you have water you can also make methane and oxygen out of water and CO2, which can be used as rocket fuel. Given low gravity and a thin atmosphere getting back into space is relatively easy. Mars is cold, but if you stay in the warmer places it isn't too bad, and the thin atmosphere doesn't cool you down to much - in fact for designers of mars suits getting rid of body heat is a major issue.
The main problem is radiation - no magnetic field like earth to protect anyone on the surface. You'd have to spend most time indoors with a thick roof above your head if you're going to live there permanently.
But living on Mars is definately doable with todays technology, and their are most likely enough resources available to be independent from earth after a while.
It's probably worthwhile too. As somebody put it: the dinosaurs died out because they didn't have a space program.
Re:Success/Failure (Score:1)
However, on the navigation side they either failed to consider, or discarded the option of using existing assets to refine the navigation estimates. During mission design, they could have decided to equip MGS with a transmitter to provide (if nothing else) range and range rate between MGS and the following spacecraft (MCO and MPL). Think of a GPS solution with one transmitter -- the solution is a sphere centered on the transmitter.
This would have been a potent piece of data because JPL knows quite well where MGS is, and combining this with other data (Earth tracking, vent models, and orbit determination software) would permit better resolution on the estimation perpendicular to the line of sight, which was the least accurate piece of tracking they had. Also, if you have measurement inccuracies, better to measure a small, converging distance than a long, diverging one. This might have exposed the bogus vent model en route, or obviated the problem entirely at the destination.
I'm not sure what impact this would have had on the cost of MGS, MCO and MPL but it might have been cheaper than commandeering the entire Deep Space Network for better tracking data. In fact there is only so much DSN to go around as a recent news story pointed out.
The point is, use the power of the network to your advantage.
Re:efnet #rit (Score:1)
1 (Offtopic) Re:Mars probe failsafes (99/12/04/1111243-103, 4 points left)
-1 (Offtopic) Re:Sure.. (99/12/04/1111243-110, 3 points left)
+1 (Insightful) Re:However... (99/12/04/1111243-25, 2 points left)
-1 (Offtopic) Good idea! (99/12/04/1111243-81, 1 points left)
sorry all.
scudder
Re:Smaller, Cheaper, Better? (Score:1)
If it's cheap and better... it won't be small.
If it's small and better... it won't be cheap!
I say forget about smaller, cheaper, better, maybe we should worry about getting it there, or we're just wasting money.
The Mars rover mission was a success, why can't we repeat it?
Re:Martian Air Force (Score:1)
Re:It's deScent..and other spillin' stuf (Score:1)
Re:NASA Sucks: Flamebate: Score 5 (Score:1)
These missions that have failed... they are VERY CHEAP compared to successes like Viking 1 & 2... and thir initial 'cheap' project, pathfinder, was an incredible success. So consider that they can either
a) Try for the next 20 years to send up dozens of 100 million dollar projects, or spend 20 years making a 50 billion dollar project that still might fail. At least this way, some thigns will work, others won't, and for shit sake.. they will LEARN! The only way to learn is to make mistakes.. and believe me, they go way out of their way to make all the mistakes they can right here on earth.
I think the engineering that goes into these probes, if you could see it, would make you think twice before coming down hard on nasa.,
Re:"Aliens" are more likely to be microorganisms. (Score:3)
Cheers!
Colonization (Score:1)
Re:Remember Pathfinder? (Score:1)
Re:Martian Air Force (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
One thing I've always wondered... (Score:1)
You always see the probes sitting there on flat land with rocks strewn all over the place. How do they get it so that none of the 'feet' land on a rock? Could the probe have landed, becone unblanced and fallen over?
Later
Erik Z
Technology can't wait (Score:1)
I agree that there are many issues on earth requiring attention and resources; however, those issues will not go away even if every dollar spent on space exploration was diverted to social and environmental issues.
If we were to wait until Earth is a utopian paradise before investing in scientific and technological prgress, none would ever occur. Utopia is unattainable.
Time Zone conversion error? (Score:2)
Earth : 12:39 p.m. PST on Friday, December 3: OK, we're listening...
Hmm, another conversion error, perhaps? Just kidding...
Re:Go Figure Duh! (Score:1)
(Trying to imagine what an 184 MILLION dollar remote control could do.)
Later
Erik Z
Water = LIFE ? (Score:1)
Re:NASA Sucks: Flamebate: Score 5 (Score:1)
And unfortunately, even with the cheaper projects, they don't really have 10-20 shots: after the 5-th failed shot you've given enough ammunition into the hand of enemies to shot down the funding completely and the humankind will remain with a minimalistic space program of several telecommunication satellites + spyballs.
As generally the funding of science was radically decreasead since the end of cold war, maybe we should find a new motivation to perform science, as the low horizon approach of commercial funding does not provide a mechanism to promote branches without immediate commercial application.
Even branches of computer science were neglected recenctly although we are in a better shape than physicists for example...
Lotzi
Re:Future of NASA? (Score:1)
Not that NASA's budget has been safe from cuts... just this year congress almost cut like $1.1 billion from it (total budget is around $14 billion. The polar lander mission cost $156 million). The budget hasn't been increased for years, despite the national surplus and all the cuts in defense spending awhile back.
Also, back on topic, I wanted to mention, the media keeps reporting 'The lander is still silent'... well, of course its still silent, it hasn't had an opportunity to communicate since last night! They might as well keep reporting 'its not Christmas yet!' for all the news that is...
Spread the risk (Score:1)
Re:Mars is the only planet that can be colonized (Score:2)
The main problem is radiation - no magnetic field like earth to protect anyone on the surface. You'd have to spend most time indoors with a thick roof above your head if you're going to live there permanently.
That's the real bummer IMO, much worse than having a crap atmosphere. It'd be no fun going there if you can't spend much time outside even with a suit. I wonder what it would cost to spin up Mars' core and give it a magnetic field like Earth's.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Water = LIFE ? (Score:1)
Re:Go Figure Duh! (Score:1)
-----
Re:Next time (Score:1)
-----
Just Thinking, but... (Score:3)
Re:NASA Blows (Score:2)
The ABC article:
I'll say. But they won't get too many more chances, if indeed any. There are too many senators and congressmen who see NASA as the ideal whipping boy through whose persecution they can advance their own careers. They won't care if the amount of money wasted is "only" $200m. "Failure after failure" they'll howl. "How much more are we going to stand for?" they'll demand. And no-one will wish to be seen supporting a program that delivers successive failures.
It's not fair, but it looks like NASA's days are numbered. Even by the time I was finishing high school (around 1979) it was trendy to be against spending money on space exploration and for spending it on politically correct causes instead. How much truer is this now?
Without widespread public support the space program is going nowhere. Remember the "smaller, faster, cheaper" philosophy wasn't an end in itself, it was the only possible response to a budget declining year-on-year.
I wish it weren't so. It's a crying shame that there was no proper followup to Apollo. We could've and should've been to Mars and back several times in the last 20 years. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is as far as we'll ever go. doesn't that prospect frighten you? It scares the hell out of me. No space travel=no point in going on, in my book. Might as well head back for the trees.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:NASA Blows (Score:2)
Could this spawn another space race?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re: more info here... (Score:2)
After all, a soft landing is a good deal more complex than a "simple" braking burn to go into orbit around another planet -- and that's not even taking into account the uncertain ruggedness of the landing site terrain itself.
JPL insists that it is taking the advice of the NASA investigative board that looked into the MCO accident, and that -- largely through greatly augmenting the size of the spacecraft's operating team, and particularly its navigation team -- any risk of repeating that appalling incident is over.
But even so, in addition to the standard unknowns of any landing attempt, there are at least three specific problems that have been mentioned over the past week as perhaps endangering MPL. The question is how worrisome are they actually?
(1) On Nov. 7, Keith Cowing's "NASA Watch" Website quoted JPL inside sources as saying that an even more horrific mistake had been made during the assembly of the Lander: the heaters had accidentally been left off the small pyrotechnic charges designed to separate the lander from the "cruise stage" that had supported and guided it during the long trip to Mars, and which was supposed to be separated 5 minutes before the Lander entered the Martian atmosphere!
As a result, these charges would be so cold that they might very well fail to detonate -- so that the Lander, still attached to its cruise stage, would crash uncontrollably onto Mars. The report stated that a JPL "tiger team" had concluded that the decision might well be made to leave the cruise stage attached until entry into the Martian atmosphere had actually begun, in the hope that the heat of air friction would warm the pyrotechnics to the point that they would then fire when commanded -- which, if true, would have been a tremendously risky maneuver.
However, when the MCO Board report was released on Nov. 10, JPL stated that this report was actually just a garbled version of another possible problem that the Board did uncover.
Indeed, Mars Surveyor Program spokeswoman Mary Hardin personally assured SpaceDaily.com on Nov. 15 that this is indeed the case, and that no known problem exists with the pyrotechnic charges.
(2) But what are the real problems that the MCO Investigation Board has turned up?
It involves the main "descent engines" that the lander will use to carry out the final 1800 meters of its final descent to the surface of Mars' after cutting itself free from its parachute, since even a huge chute cannot brake the craft below about 300 km/hour in the thin Martian air. These 12 thrusters burn hydrazine propellant, which is ignited when it contacts a bed of chemical catalyst that causes the hydrazine to break down explosively into ammonia and water vapor.
But the Board raised the possibility that, if the catalyst was chilled below 0 deg C during the long trip to Mars, it might be chemically sluggish in igniting the hydrazine, making the thrusters unreliable.
"...The cold catalyst bed-induced ignition delays, and the resulting irregular pulses on startup, could seriously impact MPL dynamics and potentially the stability of the vehicle during the terminal descent operations, possibly leading to a non-upright touchdown" -- known to the average person as "crash and burn".
Moreover, the MCO Board also noted that if the lander's fuel lines were comparably cold, the hydrazine might freeze solid in them before it even reached the engines.
Having decided that JPL had underestimated these dangers, the MCO Board recommended that the electric heaters for the fuel lines should be turned on earlier than had been planned to ensure that they were properly warm -- and it also recommended that JPL should consider firing the descent thrusters in a series of extremely short bursts during the first few seconds of engine startup, to ensure that the catalyst beds were warm enough to work properly afterwards.
JPL agreed to turn on the fuel line heaters several hours before the lander arrived at Mars, which would raise the temperature of the engines themselves to 8 deg C at the time they were started.
It also stated that its tests showed that the engines' catalyst beds would work properly at temperatures as low as -20 deg C, making those short startup bursts unnecessary -- although it added: "More ground-based test firings are scheduled to better characterize engine performance at various temperatures." At any rate, the odds look good that these particular problems have been dealt with.
(3) However, the Board also expressed another worry. Every previous soft landing that the U.S. or the Soviet Union has ever carried out on the Moon or Mars has involved the use of throttleable rocket engines whose thrust can be controlled over a wide range -- allowing the craft to control its descent speed in response to the data coming in from its radar -- and each engine has also been separately throttleable, allowing the craft to tilt itself in order to cancel out any horizontal drift that the radar detects.
But MPL uses a new "pulse-mode" engine system. Instead of three smoothly throttleable engines, it carries three clusters of four thrusters each whose thrusts are rigidly fixed at 27 kg per thruster -- and it controls its descent rate and its tilt by rapidly flicking the 12 separate thrusters on and off for as little as a small fraction of a second in order to control the craft's overall thrust level.
The Board noted: "This type of powered descent has always been considered to be very difficult and stressing for a planetary exploration soft landing" because of the vibrations it produces -- which is why it has never been used before.
"The concern has been that the feedline hydraulics and water hammer effects could be very complex and interactive. This issue could be further aggravated by fuel slosh, uneven feeding of propellant from the two tanks, and possible center of gravity mismatch on the vehicle... Under extreme worst-case conditions for feedline interactions, it is possible that some thrusters could produce near-zero thrust and some could produce nearly twice the expected thrust when commanded to operate."
JPL had concluded that enough was known by now about these possible problems that computer guidance software could be written that would deal reliably with them -- and since it is much cheaper and easier to develop a fixed-thrust rocket engine than it is to develop and manufacture a new throttleable engine, JPL decided to go with the pulse-mode landing technique this time.
The Board noted: "It was stated many times by the MPL project team during the reviews with the Board, that a vast number of simulations, analyses and rigorous tests were all carefully conducted during the development program to account for all these factors during the propulsive landing maneuver. However, because of the extreme complexity of this landing maneuver, the EDL [Entry-Descent-Landing] team should carefully re-verify that all the above described effects have been accounted for in the terminal maneuver strategies and control laws and the associated software for EDL operations."
Given JPL's blunders in navigating the Mars Climate Orbiter -- and the similar problems the Board uncovered in the management of the MPL, due largely to an inadequate number of personnel and a poorly designed control organization -- this author is not greatly confident that this has been adequately done.
Unfortunately, by this time there isn't much time left to do it thoroughly, or to change the landing software in response. It is therefore reasonable to assume that because of this fundamental problem, there is a distinct element of a risky gamble in the MPL landing, even apart from the unknown terrain features of the exact landing point.
This area of Mars was thought to be one of the smoothest on the planet -- but recent photos by the Mars Global Surveyor's high-resolution telescopic camera have shown that it is somewhat rougher than expected.
Even if MPL does fail, though, at least we'll know why -- right? Wrong. For the first time ever, a spacecraft will have no radio contact of any sort with Earth during its landing sequence -- even the rudimentary kinds of signals that Mars Pathfinder sent immediately on "bounce down" were able to indicate that its landing had been successful.
However, as the landing site is so near Mars' south pole, the Lander's low-gain antenna isn't properly aligned to allow even simple low-power signals to be sent to Earth -- let alone any engineering telemetry on the functioning of the craft's systems.
After separating from its cruise stage, the craft won't reestablish radio contact with Earth until fully 20 minutes after the landing (set for noon Pacific time), at which time it is scheduled to finish pointing its small dish antenna at Earth to allow direct contact.
Later, it will start using its low-gain UHF antenna to communicate larger amounts of data to the Mars Global Surveyor, which will in turn relay it to Earth -- but, for several reasons, MGS can't be used for that purpose until several days after the landing.
If MPL's landing fails, we'll never know why -- whether it's a design flaw in the craft, or simply an unavoidable landing on bad terrain. It will be a replay of the loss of the Mars Observer spacecraft during a brief planned period of radio silence, which forced its accident review board to come up with several possible failure causes and try to guess which was most likely.
Again, this is not reassuring. It's too late to do anything about this with MPL; but for this author it is hoped that by the time of the next landing mission in 2002, NASA will have modified the lander so that it can send engineering data to one of the Mars orbiting spacecraft that are already scheduled to regularly receive data from it after the landing.
In any case, given the number of unknowns in MPL's landing, there will be even more reasons than usual for us to hold our breaths until that confirmatory signal comes through -- or not.
Re:I hope you are kidding. (Score:2)
There is limited cooperation between NASA and the USAF in some areas, but the two organizations have very distinct missions.
When the USAF and NASA were jointly funding and cooperating on the Shuttle program, the USAF was not happy about losing control over how their money was being spent and the loss of operational control. The USAF wanted a blue shuttle, and their own launch facility at Vandenberg AFB. This was shot down for budgetary reasons. After the Challenger disaster, the USAF bailed out of the Shuttle program and returned to expendable launch vehicles.
Re:"Aliens" are more likely to be microorganisms. (Score:2)
Re:ajpace@ieng9.ucsd.edu (Score:2)
"The Human empire rejoices as its scientists have uncovered the secrets of 'Mass Driver' from an ancient alien spaceship"
Kintanon