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Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site

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Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site

#71

Post by smackfu »

tangue wrote: post #62

In Rob Manning's book [0] : He explained how hard it is to land on Mars. It's nicely sum up in those two sentences : “There’s too much atmosphere on Mars to land heavy vehicles like we do on the moon, using propulsive technology completely,” said Manning, “and there’s too little atmosphere to land like we do on Earth. So, it’s in this ugly, grey zone.” [1] The recent success of Curiosity, Spirit and Opportunity must…

Also it's pretty dusty, so doing a controlled burn all the way down (like SpaceX does on Earth) kicks up a huge dust cloud which settles on all your nice solar panels.

Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site

#72

Post by zardo »

amelius wrote: post #66
beamatronic wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have proven designs for Mars rovers, and a proven delivery system. The R&D has been done, the infrastructure is in place - why don't we send some more? We should be able to make incremental updates and constantly improve the rovers capabilities.

Speaking of which, why didn't the Schiaparelli use a proven design for the landing system?

NASA was going to provide the landing technology, but the funding was cut.

Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site

#73

Post by CamperBob2 »

LunaSea wrote: post #27

Once again, billions of euros are put into use for what is essentially scientific curiosity instead of trying to solve the very real problems Europe is facing. I love astronomy and space exploration but the amounts of money wasted into it rather than other problems with a high priority is staggering.

I'm with you, to some extent. As a libertarian-minded person, I wish there were a way you could opt out of funding space exploration missions and other expensive projects that you might not agree with. If there were, I might be able to avail myself of the same choices when it comes to funding things that I disagree with, such as massive social engineering projects and trillion-dollar wars of choice.

But as a flawed, selfish person, I also wish there were a way to make sure that you and your descendants never see any benefits from the research you thought wasn't worthwhile.

Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site

#75

Post by lifeformed »

LunaSea wrote: post #27

Once again, billions of euros are put into use for what is essentially scientific curiosity instead of trying to solve the very real problems Europe is facing. I love astronomy and space exploration but the amounts of money wasted into it rather than other problems with a high priority is staggering.

Money can be spent on more than one thing at a time. This is a drop in the bucket compared to other "wastes".

Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site

#76

Post by lmm »

beamatronic wrote: post #40
protomyth wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm waiting for the day where someone can tell their rover to drive / fly over and find out what the heck happened.

We have proven designs for Mars rovers, and a proven delivery system. The R&D has been done, the infrastructure is in place - why don't we send some more? We should be able to make incremental updates and constantly improve the rovers capabilities.

The teams rarely stay together - there's often no stable funding source, and much of the grunt work is done by grad students. And the technology is advancing all the time - we're sending heavier and heavier landers, with better and better instruments. Even on Earth, if you were on a team investigating animal migration (say), you probably wouldn't be thrilled to use the same hardware that the last team used 8 years ago.

Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site

#77

Post by MrZongle2 »

elsonrodriguez wrote: post #70
dr_zoidberg wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opportunity is not so far (it's actually inside a crater nearby I think), but it'd take months to get to place, and there may not be enough scientific value in doing so just to see the charred remains of Schiaparelli. But who knows, it's so over it's expected mission life that maybe someone goes "f * it, let's go take a look".

We're years away from landing anything that could dig a hole deeper than Schiaparelli's crater. Depending on how hard it cratered, and how soon Opportunity could get there, it could be the most important thing for Opportunity to do.

Not necessarily. Schiaparelli used hydrazine for fuel, and if it smashed into the surface it seems to me that it's a reasonable assumption that the whole crash site is contaminated with it. Is that something we want to get all over the rover?

Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site

#79

Post by Gravityloss »

dr_zoidberg wrote: post #28
ythl wrote: post #23

High visibility European space missions seem to have catastrophic failures a lot

Mmmm... not so sure, the Huygens probe was a high visibility ESA mission[0] and worked fine. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens_(spacecraft)

It wasn't publicized anywhere near enough. :(

Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site

#80

Post by Sharlin »

shuntress wrote: post #64
raverbashing wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it seems they made quite a dent on Mars I'm not so sure that this should be interpreted as "thrusters turning off prematurely" rather, it getting to the point of shut-off sooner (and faster) OR it stopped because they hit the ground

That is when it switched from thrusters to lithobraking.

Lithobraking has actually been a feature in at least one Mars mission: the pair of impactor probes that piggybacked on NASA's unlucky Mars Polar Lander mission of 1999 [1]. The MPL itself, as is quite well known, ended up doing an unplanned lithobraking maneuver after its retrorockets shut down too soon (!) due to insufficient integration testing. The impactors were never heard of either; the exact failure mode remains unclear.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_2

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