New Mars craft to be launched this summer

This new Reconnaissance Orbiter will be launched August 10, 2005. Its flight will roughly take 7 months, so it should land around March/April 2006. Basically this is a "major upgrade" from previous probes, mainly in the quality of its photos being transmitted from intself back to NASA.

Story:
www.denverpost.com...

That spacecraft, also built by Lockheed, apparently crashed into Mars in 1999 after its landing rockets shut down prematurely.

Did our rover that is on Mars right now, ever find it?? How much of the planet has our rover covered right now?

no they never found the craft that crashed in 1999, apparently when it was decending to the surface of mars, the transmissions from the craft to NASA were becoming jumbled an scratchy. With these jumbled transmissions came confsuion, so after thinking they already landed, when the actually were still decending, they deploid the crafts legs, thus letting it fall to be crushed on the surface on Mars. However, the NASA and Lockhead team hope to find their lost probe with this new craft along with getting extrodinary pictures and new useful data, such as new info on gullies in craters and the likes.

heres the story on the missing probe from 1999:
msnbc.msn.com...

tondo
Its flight will roughly take 7 months, so it should land around March/April 2006.

its an orbiter...its not gonna land.

balon0
How much of the planet has our rover covered right now?

if you want a distance...not much, each rover probably only covered a mile or so, but they have drove several miles each, but they do a lot of back and forth work to find the more interesting places.

I cant wait to see the pictures this craft sends back, with a 1 meter resolution, we should be able to see the crashed lander, and maybe Beagle 2, and we will be able to see Spirit & Opportunity, although they will be dead by then.

Murcielago... u got me there hopefully i wont say something stupid again like that lol

Boys, boys... finding official site can't be this hard.


marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov...

Lot of mission information:
marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov...
Mission timeline
marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov...

Originally posted by tondo
apparently when it was decending to the surface of mars, the transmissions from the craft to NASA were becoming jumbled an scratchy. With these jumbled transmissions came confsuion, so after thinking they already landed, when the actually were still decending, they deploid the crafts legs, thus letting it fall to be crushed on the surface on Mars.

Read again...

Mars Polar Lander was designed under NASA's the "faster, better, cheaper" program that aimed to build highly focused projects for relatively small sums. The probe provided no entry, descent and landing telemetry data, so there was no way to know whether the lander reached its terminal descent propulsion phase.
That means landing was completely automatic and it didn't send anything to flight control.
Neither forgetting minutes long delay in communication would have made remote control impossible.

yep, they believe they have now found the missing Mars Polar Lander.
Here is a link to the story
www.abovetopsecret.com... Remeber to vote on the story.

The new Reconnaissance Orbiter will also present a good opportunity to confirm this and to get better data on the subject.

Let me guess....this one's not going to be designed to find life on Mars either.

Why do they keep delaying? What are they afraid of? They sent those two rovers to Mars a few years ago, and did they have an instrument to detect life? No....they looked at rocks. Wow....

Originally posted by Flinx
Let me guess....this one's not going to be designed to find life on Mars either.

Why do they keep delaying? What are they afraid of? They sent those two rovers to Mars a few years ago, and did they have an instrument to detect life? No....they looked at rocks. Wow....

The rovers landed in Jan. 04, not 3 years ago.

We cant just wave a magical wond to find life, I doubt Mars has any, but if it does its microbial, not intelligent life. Rocks tell a lot about Mars' geology, and past, such as water evidnece. Personally (being not a scientist) I think the best "Life Detector" there is are pictuers, and the rovers have took thousands of them.

Originally posted by Murcielago

Originally posted by Flinx
Let me guess....this one's not going to be designed to find life on Mars either.

Why do they keep delaying? What are they afraid of? They sent those two rovers to Mars a few years ago, and did they have an instrument to detect life? No....they looked at rocks. Wow....

The rovers landed in Jan. 04, not 3 years ago.

We cant just wave a magical wond to find life, I doubt Mars has any, but if it does its microbial, not intelligent life. Rocks tell a lot about Mars' geology, and past, such as water evidnece. Personally (being not a scientist) I think the best "Life Detector" there is are pictuers, and the rovers have took thousands of them.

Uh, I never said the rovers were landed 3 years ago. I said they were sent a few years ago. The were launched in 2003....for me that's a few years ago.

Also, there are instruments that are used just for detecting life (I'm talking microbial). Viking had one, remember? The results came back inconclusive and some scientists believe they might have been postive. Beagle 2 also was sent to Mars for the expressed purprose of looking for life.
It wouldn't have been too hard to include one of these instruments on the rovers, while still having ones that could look at rocks.

My point is that NASA interested at all aspects of Mars (past water, etc) except the one that is of the most importance to humanity. The confirmation of extraterrestrial life, even microbial, would be a great event. NASA seems to want to put off that event.

This is part of my greater dissatisfaction with the agency that also stems from their lackluster manned space program, and that "Slower, cheaper, crappier" agenda that has us sending easily destroyed tinkertoys to mars, then having slamming them into the surface hoping some inflated bags will protect the lander and not roll into a ravine somewhere.

The policy was called Faster, better, cheaper, But that policy is done with, I agree, I didn't like that policy either...I'd rather see a billion dollar probe be sent for a variety of tasks. A current spendy one thats doing its job is Cassini, orbiting Saturn, I believe that cost 1.2 billion, and it has dont a great job.

I have high hopes for Nasa, mainly because they got rid of O'keefe and now have Michael Griffin for an administrator...whom I believe will set things right.

Uh, I never said the rovers were landed 3 years ago. I said they were sent a few years ago. The were launched in 2003....for me that's a few years ago.

a few is 3, Spirit was launched in June...which makes it less then 2 years ago.

Originally posted by Murcielago
The policy was called Faster, better, cheaper, But that policy is done with, I agree, I didn't like that policy either...I'd rather see a billion dollar probe be sent for a variety of tasks. A current spendy one thats doing its job is Cassini, orbiting Saturn, I believe that cost 1.2 billion, and it has dont a great job.

I always call it Slower, Cheaper, Crappier just to be sarcastic. But yeah, I liked Cassini. It was robust, nuclear powered, and has "tons" of instruments. Missions like Cassini, Gallleio(sp?), and the ill fated Mars Observer cost alot more, but they can get alot more done than these tiny, one shot probes.

I also hope that this new NASA administrator is better than the last one... I don't know anything about him. So far I haven't seen anything that demonstrates his willingness to shake things up in NASA. The space program looks as stagnant as ever.

I recall having a Junior High School science teacher who told us the story of Viking, only he claimed that Viking returned a positive result on the life-test, only to be overruled by mission control who ruled it was a false positive due to cross contamination before it left Earth.

He told us this story with a very sarcastic tone, and a disgusted look on his face. Ah, the peril of being a space enthusiast in an era of cynicism.