Gut feeling... |
Gut feeling... |
May 22 2008, 08:15 PM
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 813 Joined: 8-February 04 From: Arabia Terra Member No.: 12 |
Something I have not posted online before...
Back in 2003, as four spacecraft approached Mars, I wrote down on a piece of paper my guess (based on nothing more than public information & gut feeling) at what each craft's chance of success (either at landing or orbital insertion) might be. My guesses were: Nozomi: 15% Beagle 2: 20% MER A: 60% MER B: 60% Mars Express: 85% In 2005 I guessed that MRO had a 90% chance of success Now, in 2008, I'm going to put a figure on Phoenix. That figure is: 55% What do you think? Too low? Too high? |
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May 25 2008, 10:45 AM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1870 Joined: 20-February 05 Member No.: 174 |
There is one point of concern regarding hearing the signal during EDL.
There's only one transmitter and frequency. MER rovers transmitted S-band "tones" during descent, flagging milestones achieved during EDL. The actual datastream was received by Odyssey (I presume not Mars Surveryor Orbiter) and recorded, the only near-real time info there was the total amount of megabytes recorded (way more than in a case of loss of signal at landing) Phoenix only has the UHF signal. Everybody, including Green Bank on Earth, are listening to that. If (arbitrary example) some wire in the transmitter breaks at parachute deploy, they won't have any idea what happened till a perfectly OK lander turns on the alternate UHF (I do presume thay have one.. have not read the press kit yet). |
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