MSL reasons for delay |
MSL reasons for delay |
Mar 4 2009, 03:33 PM
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#1
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2547 Joined: 13-September 05 Member No.: 497 |
I wanted to make sure that everyone interested sees Adrian Brown's articles at http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1319/1 and http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1318/1 about the technical and budgetary problems with MSL that led to the launch slip. While I can't claim to be privy to the budgetary and political issues at the mission level, the technical discussion seems like a fair summary of the situation as I understand it, at least as good a one as can be gathered from public sources.
People in other forums have complained about errors in these articles, but without giving specific examples or providing any factual basis for their objections. I don't find that very useful. If there are real flaws in this account, I'd be quite interested to know what they are. p.s. I guess we need to change the name of this subforum. -------------------- Disclaimer: This post is based on public information only. Any opinions are my own.
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May 8 2009, 09:56 AM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 234 Joined: 8-May 05 Member No.: 381 |
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/technology/power
Above website states that the"MMRTG (used on MSL) optimizes power levels over a minimum lifetime of 14 years". And if I recall correctly, the MSL delay press conference last December stated that the RTG power loss during the two year delay would be on the order of 5% |
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May 11 2009, 02:34 PM
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#3
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 30 Joined: 3-October 07 From: Fátima - Portugal Member No.: 3927 |
5% is a small amount of lost, so we can hope that it will not be a seroius concerns in case of a possible extended MSL mission. Thanks for the information!
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