Mars Odyssey in safe mode, Will not see much MER data until back online |
Mars Odyssey in safe mode, Will not see much MER data until back online |
Dec 7 2006, 08:02 PM
Post
#1
|
|
Member Group: Members Posts: 913 Joined: 4-September 06 From: Boston Member No.: 1102 |
Steve Squyres reports in Mission Update
December 7, 2006 A very quick update: We just learned this morning that the Mars Odyssey spacecraft has gone into "safe mode". This is something that can happen when there's a glitch of some sort on board the spacecraft... it puts itself into a very safe state and waits for commands from Earth. Mars Odyssey appears to be in great shape and should be back in business in a few days. A likely cause of the event was a big blast of high-energy particles from the Sun that got to Mars right before it happened. So there doesn't appear to be anything to worry about, and both rovers came through the particle event unscathed. But because we relay most of our data through Mars Odyssey, we won't see very much data from the rovers until Odyssey is back online. Posted previously by nprev on the Solar Activity thread. -------------------- |
|
|
Guest_Sunspot_* |
Dec 9 2006, 05:35 PM
Post
#2
|
Guests |
Just thinking the unthinkable here. What if NASA were to lose Odyssey. Would MRO be able to take over data relay at this stage of it's mission? Would it impact MRO's mission too much?
I would think it wouldn't take up too much of the spacecraft's resources transmitting a few dozen images per day, that data volume is tiny compared to a single HiRISE image, but the rover to orbiter relay might? |
|
|
Dec 9 2006, 06:29 PM
Post
#3
|
|
Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14433 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Would MRO be able to take over data relay at this stage of it's mission? Yes QUOTE Would it impact MRO's mission too much? A bit - the limiting factor is probably the manhours involved in writing the sequences to do the relay. Consider that a good MER UHF relay pass is 100 Mbits. I'm not sure about the size of the average HiRISE observation, but it's going to be an order of magnitude or two more than that. Even at the lowest normal data rate, 100 Mbits is less than 4 minutes of MRO downlink - so say three passes per day ( one per rover, plus a second on one rover...about average I think) , 12 minutes out of a near 24 hour downlink schedule. 1%. Get to closest approach and it's more like 0.1% of the downlink. Doug |
|
|
Dec 10 2006, 03:59 PM
Post
#4
|
|
Member Group: Members Posts: 408 Joined: 3-August 05 Member No.: 453 |
I'm just curious why there have not been any MER DTE image uploads? Does anybody know if DTE has been used at all since Odyssey went into safe mode? Perhaps they are using DTE for commanding/telemetry (and not images).
Airbag [added Dec 13: Answered by Jim Bell; Because Mars is pretty much still the other side of the Sun as seen from Earth, DTE was only getting about 1M bit total raw data per day, so no room in the datastream for images] |
|
|
Lo-Fi Version | Time is now: 8th June 2024 - 02:45 PM |
RULES AND GUIDELINES Please read the Forum Rules and Guidelines before posting. IMAGE COPYRIGHT |
OPINIONS AND MODERATION Opinions expressed on UnmannedSpaceflight.com are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of UnmannedSpaceflight.com or The Planetary Society. The all-volunteer UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderation team is wholly independent of The Planetary Society. The Planetary Society has no influence over decisions made by the UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderators. |
SUPPORT THE FORUM Unmannedspaceflight.com is funded by the Planetary Society. Please consider supporting our work and many other projects by donating to the Society or becoming a member. |