Here's Looking At You, Kid, MGS Sees Mars Odyssey and Mars Express |
Here's Looking At You, Kid, MGS Sees Mars Odyssey and Mars Express |
May 23 2005, 10:38 AM
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#31
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2488 Joined: 17-April 05 From: Glasgow, Scotland, UK Member No.: 239 |
As MGS nears the end of it's lifetime there appear to have been a number of, er, *discretionary* projects undertaken, and - after all - how many panoramic images are you going to take in the darkness beyond the terminator, just where the old birds are going to be well-illuminated...
-------------------- Remember: Time Flies like the wind - but Fruit Flies like bananas!
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May 23 2005, 11:29 AM
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#32
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14431 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Not to mention it's also quite usefull practice for orbital rendezvous w.r.t. MSR in the not TOO distant future. MRO has a nav camera - and MTO will do some on orbit rendezvous experiments.
Doug |
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May 24 2005, 10:16 PM
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#33
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 81 Joined: 19-April 05 Member No.: 256 |
I did manage to find a couple of tidbits about the Viking orbits. It looks like they were left in pretty eccentric orbits.
"On 7 August 1980 Viking 1 Orbiter was running low on attitude control gas and its orbit was raised from 357 x 33943 km to 320 x 56000 km to prevent impact with Mars and possible contamination until the year 2019. " The orbiter(Viking 2)developed a leak in its propulsion system that vented its attitude control gas. It was placed in a 302 x 33176 km orbit and turned off on 25 July 1978 after returning almost 16,000 images in 706 orbits around Mars. http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/viking-1.htm It looks like we got about another 14 years to get a picture of V1. Judging by it's orbit, I would say it would be a good time to put a seismometer on the ground and listen for V2's arrival. Would these orbits have circularized quit a bit by now? With such a low periapsis, it would almost be like a mild aerobraking. Gary |
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May 25 2005, 03:20 AM
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#34
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Senior Member Group: Admin Posts: 4763 Joined: 15-March 05 From: Glendale, AZ Member No.: 197 |
QUOTE (garybeau @ May 24 2005, 10:16 PM) I did manage to find a couple of tidbits about the Viking orbits. It looks like they were left in pretty eccentric orbits. "On 7 August 1980 Viking 1 Orbiter was running low on attitude control gas and its orbit was raised from 357 x 33943 km to 320 x 56000 km to prevent impact with Mars and possible contamination until the year 2019. " The orbiter(Viking 2)developed a leak in its propulsion system that vented its attitude control gas. It was placed in a 302 x 33176 km orbit and turned off on 25 July 1978 after returning almost 16,000 images in 706 orbits around Mars. http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/viking-1.htm It looks like we got about another 14 years to get a picture of V1. Judging by it's orbit, I would say it would be a good time to put a seismometer on the ground and listen for V2's arrival. Would these orbits have circularized quit a bit by now? With such a low periapsis, it would almost be like a mild aerobraking. Gary That was great reading. Thanks for finding those. I was in high school back then and became a Viking news junkie. We are so spoiled these days with the Internet compared to how much information was available back then. -------------------- If Occam had heard my theory, things would be very different now.
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