[X] My Assistant

[Stu]

Has anyone ever thought "Why didn't they take a picture of... xxx?" during the MER mission? One image that wasn't attempted - and it's always baffled me why not - was a shot Oppy's reflection in the backshell at Endurance. How cool a picture would that have been?! Maybe they didn't want to drive in amongst all those sprinngs and cogs and wreckage (fair enough) or maybe it just wouldn't have worked, technically... not a reflective enough surface or something, I dunno, I'm sure someone will give the specs... but I like to think it would have looked something like this...

[Decepticon]

Another category could be "Pictures made and then lost" - for example, didn`t Galileo have to ditch a whole Io flyby recording for some reason? (I could be wrong)

Are you referring to Orbit insertion? I think Galileo was to Observe Europa's South polar region and do a IO flyby 1st and only during primary mission.

[Chmee]

Are you referring to Orbit insertion? I think Galileo was to Observe Europa's South polar region and do a IO flyby 1st and only during primary mission.

Probably the greatest missed opportunity in spacecraft history would be when Galilieo was not present at Jupiter when comet Schumaker-Levy colided with it in 1994. (Galilieo was a few million miles away still). If Galilieo lauched as planned it would have been orbiting Jupiter when all the comet fragments hit. Could you imagine the photos that would have come out of that?! The pictures from Earth are pretty amazing themselves.

Unfortunety, techincal delays (and the Challenger accident) delayed launch and Galilieo did not arrive until 1995.

[K-P]

Probably the greatest missed opportunity in spacecraft history would be when Galilieo was not present at Jupiter when comet Schumaker-Levy colided with it in 1994. (Galilieo was a few million miles away still). If Galilieo lauched as planned it would have been orbiting Jupiter when all the comet fragments hit. Could you imagine the photos that would have come out of that?! The pictures from Earth are pretty amazing themselves.

Unfortunety, techincal delays (and the Challenger accident) delayed launch and Galilieo did not arrive until 1995.

Well, such things happen. But hey, at least we had Hubble on orbit AND repaired by -93 service mission so it was running smoothly and offering great views! Few years earlier it might have been blurrier event for us. And few years before that... no Hubble, no so many large telescopes on the ground either.

Actually, had the comet hit Jupiter 20-30 years earlier (blink of an eye in cosmic scale) we might have missed the event altogether, or maybe just seen the aftermath when only few lucky ones had been watching the planet closely 24/7 and then reporting to others. These impacts on this scale occur once in a millennium or so anyway...

So, at the end, I feel that we were quite lucky and have been and will be witnessing more great moments in space exploration during our lifetime...