That's a good call....but then, another 2 years or so on LEO, it'll have consumed a bunch of prop for attitude control. But as you say - no more crazy than Hayabusa.

Atmospheric drag will drop it out of orbit in a month or so....and if you had the control authority to raise the altitude to overcome that, then I assume you would also have the control to tell it to get to Mars already.

There are fairly large antennae that regularly track vehicles in LEO for downlink - indeed, some of the BWG's at Goldstone are specifically called High Speed BWG's - for their high speed tracking. ( DSS 27 and 28 )
From http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsndocs/810-005/104/104F.pdf
"The HSB antenna differs from the BWG antennas in that the pedestal room is
above ground level, the microwave optics design is different, and the subreflector does not focus
automatically for the purpose of maintaining gain as the elevation angle of the antenna changes.
The HSB antenna has higher tracking rates than do the BWG antennas and is equipped primarily
for tracking Earth-orbiting satellites."

Those antennae could happily receive a signal from the MER low gain antenna at Mars. Surely they could, if it were transmitting, hear PG? And if they, like the other BWG's - can transmit at 20kw... I'm fairly sure that if it were listening...PG could hear it.

The challenge is, is there something unique about the PG telecoms system that is different from normal DSN ops for interplanetary or Earth Orbiting assets? I'm sure these antennae have the physical characteristics to do this job - do they have the back-end facilities to do it, that's the question.

D

We don't really know what's happened, so we can't really compare it to previous missions.

But - under the assumption that PG is actually healthy but the Fregat upper stage refused to fire up again......

Ranger 1 and 2 both ended up stranded in LEO as their Agena upper stage didn't fire to leave LEO to head toward the moon, so could certainly be considered of a similar type.

Mars 96 was an upper-stage failure, and given that the Fregat that should be sending PG on it's way is also an upper stage and could be considered even more similar.


"first of event its kind"

Depending on how you define 'kind' and given the uncertainty of what we know about PG...then, no, I don't think it's the first event like this.

I actually built several of Dave's models from Spacecraft Kits about 14 years ago....and only learned that Dave made them just a few months ago! They're great - the Magellan one still survives!

In case you can't find it immediately - Juno's here : http://spacecraftkits.com/free.html

and yet



It would seem to be that the first precludes being able to claim the second. I don't know how they can claim it's functioning properly and sun-pointed...without telemetry. I wonder how much of this is a language barrier issue.

Next week.

Radiators. As with Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity - the avionics within the aeroshell generate heat. With MSL, they generate a lot of heat as it includes the RTG.

Freon cooling loops go around the rover, out thru the aeroshell into the cruise stage and out to the radiators where that heat is rejected into space.

If you look at the MSL fairing - you can see a ring of small cooling ducts that will be wafting those radiators with air before launch.


Doug

You're speculating about root cause / systematic issues 1 - After the fact and 2 - without data.

Don't.

When the SNR will be poor because it's so dark.




It isn't.



After a decade of seasonal frost crushing?

If you didn't know where PHX was....could you find it in the pictures taken a martian year after landing? Now make that 5x worse. I doubt it'd be visible at all.

Given the latitude of the MPL landing site - the sun is always at a low angle.

That it was 15 mins 'late' was shared via social media and the NASA TV schedule several hours before the press conf.

Let's send a Dragon capsule. What science can it do? Nothing. It's an empty box.

NOW - let's put some science in it - NOW let's send it. NOW....we have a mission.

McKay is proposing one such payload for it. Someone else could propose a different payload.

Red Dragon is a box. It's up to scientists to put something it it. McKay is one such scientist proposing a contents for that box.

They were all significantly more powerful than a usual RCS thruster. They were, infact, the descent engines for the 2001 lander.

And someone else could also propose a Red Dragon platformed mission as a discovery mission. It's not significantly different to details of launch vehicles being available. The point remains - it's a platform, not a proposal.

Dragon is a platform, not a specific mission proposal.

There maybe something unique that constrains the ejection burn from LEO to Mars once they're in LEO. Their window may have been a couple of weeks to launch, but once launched, the orbital parameters of that launch may constrain the ejection to a few days.

Actually, not really. It didn't seem 'lost' at all. If you were under the impression it was - then that's your typically over negative interpretation - and doesn't reflect the realty of the DIF spacecraft's post launch safing.

That was after it had left LEO and was on its way to Tempel 1. The s/c continued critical events, such as solar array deployment - and was talking to the ground.

It's the lack of data that makes this current predicament hard to diagnose and fix.

BTW - before any of the more extreme OCD of you say 'Whahhhhahha - it's in the Past and Future sub-forum'... I'll put it into Orbiting Spacecraft, when it goes into Martian orbit. (Same rule applies to MSL)

Different planetary protection requirements anyway - MSL is going to a potential habitat. PHSRM isn't.

Then don't wait. Do something else. Then, in late 2012 - the book will be waiting for you.

No, just Unity. You have made that exact same mistake in the past and been corrected on it before.



Not really. You're intelligent enough to work it out for yourself and you know exactly the limitations you're getting yourself into running Linux as your main OS.



Do not advocate or even hint at software piracy on this forum. Do that again, and you will get a suspension.

It it had a lot of westward component.....it wouldn't be a northward slope any more.

Sorry - yes - that's what I was agreeing with. I hadn't spotted Eoin's reference to the tiny gap in insulation near the top.

I think so.

How about