[X] My Assistant

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

Due to the postponed Space Shuttle Discovery landing, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter pre-launch press conference and mission science briefing is today at 1 p.m. EDT, at the NASA News Center, Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Fla.


Pre-launch press conference participants:

Doug McCuistion, Mars Exploration Program Director
NASA Headquarters, Washington

Chuck Dovale, NASA Launch Manager
KSC

Mike Jensen, Vice President and Chief Technical Officer
International Launch Services, McLean, Va.

Jim Graf, MRO Project Manager
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif.

Clay Flinn, U. S. Air Force Atlas V Launch Weather Officer
45th Weather Squadron, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.

The mission science briefing immediately follows the pre-launch press conference.

Participants:

Michael Meyer, Mars Exploration Program Chief Scientist
NASA Headquarters

Richard Zurek, MRO Project Scientist
JPL

Alfred McEwen, Principal Investigator, High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment
University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.

Scott Murchie, Principal Investigator
Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars
Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.

Enrico Flamini, Director, Solar System Programs
Italian Space Agency, Rome

The briefings, which were originally scheduled for tomorrow, will be carried live on NASA TV.

[edstrick]

Mars 2 (over-steep reentry, may have burned up, and /or high speed impact, presumably in pieces)

Mars 3 (went silent after landing)

Mars 6 (went silent on impact, supposedly retrofired)

Their positions are known to something like 1 degree. That's a *LOT* of terrain to image at 0.4 meter/pixel.

The landing sites were determined by launch date, arrival date, and engineering constraints on the entry trajectory and post landing communications, etc. The sites were not selected for specific site-specific science objectives.

There is no real science value in any search for the Soviet landers, while there is some engineering value and current interest value in the much easier search for Beagle 2 and Polar Lander.

But... the Soviet landers are *NOT* going anywhere, unless they get kidnapped by UFO's. When some follow-on orbiter does global mapping at say .5 meter/pixel, somebody like the nuts on this forum will be crazy enough to search for them... or eventually, they'll just be randomly run-across, perhaps in 0.1 meter.pixel images or from the ground. And somebody will have their mind blown. Wheee!

We'll find crashed Lunar Surveyors and Lunar probes and orbiters <in pieces> first.

[Bob Shaw]

Does anyone know if MRO is to take any test shots of the Earth and Moon?

[jamescanvin]

Does anyone know if MRO is to take any test shots of the Earth and Moon?

I think the cameras have covers over them to protect the optics till after aero-breaking, so I suspect the answer to this is no.


J