Cryosat Mission Feared Lost Options

[general]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4319596.stm

Mission control at ESA is growing increasingly concerned about the fate of Europe's ice monitoring spacecraft, Cryosat.

The Cryosat spacecraft was launched at 1902 local time today, Oct 8, from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia, but mission controllers have failed to receive a signal from the spacecraft.

[edstrick]

Regarding the Mars 6 descent data. 2 sets of science results were published from that.

There was very low sample-rate deceleration data, I do not recall if it was from doppler through the relaying flyby vehicle or onboard accelerometers, but it provided a crude atmosphere temperature structure profile that was totally eclipsed ni quality by the Viking entry data.

The other data was engineering data from the pump-down of a mass spectrometer that was going to take atmosphere mass-spectra as the first science task after landing, instead of an image. The data indicated that the mass spectrometer pump was "laboring" and having problems reducing in-instrument pressure to the level needed for the science data after landing. Their inferred cause was an estimated 30% argon in the atmosphere.

This value was large, but not outside the range of some models for the composition of the martian atmosphere, and caused concern for successful operation of the already designed Viking Lander mass spectrometers. Viking had a simple mass spectrometer or ion-spectrometer on the entry heat shield as part of an atmosphere structure experiment, and I think it was able to confirm a much lower limit on argon fraction, enabling normal planned operation of the lander instruments.

The limited Mars 6 results, if I recall, were published in an article in the journal "Icarus" maybe a year before the Vikings got to Mars.