[X] My Assistant

[Phil Stooke]

I like asking questions, and where better than a place like this?

So here's one... Mars Climate Orbiter burned up during a too-low pass through the atmosphere. So where would its debris have fallen?

This ought to be a fairly straightforward question to answer. We presumably know, or can find, the details of its trajectory as it approached Mars. We know the orientation of Mars at the time. The location of periapsis in Mars coordinates ought to be easy to find. This might be buried in a technical report somewhere, or it might be possible to figure it out with one of the solar system simulator type programs. Can anybody help answer this?

(if so, we can extend it to Pioneer Venus and Magellan later in a separate thread)

Phil