2009 Or 2011 ?, 1 or 2 ? |
2009 Or 2011 ?, 1 or 2 ? |
May 3 2005, 11:11 AM
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 290 Joined: 26-March 04 From: Edam, The Netherlands Member No.: 65 |
Does anybody know when and how many MSL will go, or when the decision on this will be made ?
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Jun 22 2005, 04:08 AM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1870 Joined: 20-February 05 Member No.: 174 |
Missions failures are most often at launch or arrival. Arrival for a lander tends to be a *lot* more likely to cause a failure than for an orbiter.
Granted, the soviets had Mars-4 fail orbit insertion in '73, the US lost Mars Observer during arrival preps in '92 <I think> and Climate Orbiter in '99, and the Japanese had Nozomi fail orbit insertion in '03 after inflight damage from solar storm radiation. But compare that to the US and Soviet/Russian losses in Mars mission launch and landing attempts. For the '09 opportunity, doesn't the Telecom orbiter launch first?... Orbiters are constrained for a low approach velocity to the planet to cut down on orbit insertion fuel mass and normally launch before a direct-descent lander would. I'd go for an '09 MSL. If I can't relay through current telecom on Odyssey and Mars Express, then it should launch with the provision that it automatically be mothballed for the '09 window if Telecom orbiter fails to be in good checked-out condition after launch, and be re-prepped for launch in '11. |
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