Mercury Landers |
Mercury Landers |
Aug 15 2005, 03:36 PM
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 212 Joined: 19-July 05 Member No.: 442 |
While the likelyhood of a Mercury Lander mission is very low, I was wondering if any planning/studies have been done on such a project?
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
Aug 19 2005, 06:23 PM
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#2
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Guests |
Well, I know that, John. I presumed that Richard Trigaux (like myself) was thinking about a surface reflector with an orbiter bouncing lidar off it -- just as the libration experiment on the Mars Netlanders would have involved a radio receiver on a Mars orbiter. But I still don't know why such surface laser reflectors (or radar reflectors) couldn't be used in association with an orbiter for Mercury libration measurements.
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Aug 19 2005, 09:31 PM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Aug 19 2005, 11:23 AM) Well, I know that, John. I presumed that Richard Trigaux (like myself) was thinking about a surface reflector with an orbiter bouncing lidar off it -- just as the libration experiment on the Mars Netlanders would have involved a radio receiver on a Mars orbiter. But I still don't know why such surface laser reflectors (or radar reflectors) couldn't be used in association with an orbiter for Mercury libration measurements. I'd take a look at the sensitivity of the approach relative to the magnitude of the phenomenon. Mars gets a yank from Jupiter every 2.5 years or so, rotates every 24.6 hours, and has an axis inclined 23 degrees from its orbit. The last two factors decrease the magnitude of the Mercurian effect by a factor of a few hundred (I don't know about the yanking). The fact that Mercury's radius is smaller makes the problem an additional 30% harder. The approach would have to be *really* sensitive (at least three significant digits) in the martian case to work the same way and tell us about Mercury's libration. I don't have any facts telling me this is *the* answer, but it's gotta be part of the story. |
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