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.
The rovers we sent cost us about $400 million each. And one failed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site
101–110 of 116 posts
Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site
#102Earlier 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.
That's pretty much what we have done: http://imgur.com/3Hg9O (Pathfinder, Spirit/Opportunity, Curiosity). Mars2020 isn't designed yet, but it will be based on Curiosity.
Mars 2020 is designed yet, you can view its design and experiments here: http://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
Sure, it may not be fully officially built, but it has been designed almost to completion.
Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's pretty much what we have done: http://imgur.com/3Hg9O (Pathfinder, Spirit/Opportunity, Curiosity). Mars2020 isn't designed yet, but it will be based on Curiosity.
Mars 2020 is designed yet, you can view its design and experiments here: http://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/ Sure, it may not be fully officially built, but it has been designed almost to completion.
Since the vehicle design is based on Opportunity, I would say the biggest news is the array of sensor/instruments on board: http://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/instruments/
Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Hydrazine is extremely unstable right? Would much of it remain after slamming in to the ground?
Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to the landing sequence... http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a23475/beagle-2-schiap... ...the lander was supposed to detach from the aeroshell at about 1km up. So if it fell from 2 to 4km up, that implies that it detached too early. This article: https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/10/20/last-data-from-schiapa... ...says that the telemetry shows that the engines did fire, for at least a few seconds. My unin…
> (Mars doesn't really do terminal velocities.) It depends on many factors, but as an order of magnitude terminal velocity on Mars is about 1000 km/h (speed of sound on Earth at sea level). https://spaceflightsystems.grc.nasa.gov/education/rocket/ter...
That's if you were to start from velocity zero (e.g. fall off a balloon). If you start from orbital velocity, you have to slow down to terminal velocity, which takes a very long time.
Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site
#106High visibility European space missions seem to have catastrophic failures a lot
Such as? Philae was a partial failure, certainly not catastrophic, but it was a "nice to have" addition to the Rosetta mission which as a whole was a huge success. Schiaparelli was an EDL engineering test and a landing failure was not exactly unexpected outcome. If the engineers can figure out what went wrong from the telemetry, it can probably be counted as a success. The actual beef of the mission is the Trace Gas…
Philae was a success. Especially considering they had no clue what they were landing on when designing Philae (the only info they had were a few bright pixels + limited spectroscopic data).
Some experiments couldn't be performed as hoped due to the lander orientation (e.g. the drill, however they could still analyse "atmospheric" dust that the drill transported to the analytical apparatus). But that does not make a mission unsuccessful. What did not succeed was the extended mission due to limited amounts of power. But this was always an optional add-on.
Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site
#107In 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…
I don't think the atmosphere is the problem with landing heavy landers like we do on the moon. For some reason I think gravity is the main problem. The only effect I can think of the atmosphere would have is on engine efficiency, and it's so thin I doubt it's much of a consideration at all.
Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site
#108In 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…
I don't think the atmosphere is the problem with landing heavy landers like we do on the moon. For some reason I think gravity is the main problem. The only effect I can think of the atmosphere would have is on engine efficiency, and it's so thin I doubt it's much of a consideration at all.
You are very wrong. Read the literature.
Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site
#109Should we say that the space programs in the 60s and the 70s were more successful? specially, if we consider the communication and the control technologies available at that time. For example, vikings had Honeywell 24 bit cpu with 18K memory. What about those Argon computers used in the soviet venera programs? Or may be, a very fast/accurate computation is not that necessary?
The landing techniques that are being used are bringing much larger payloads to the Martian surface than were brought in previous landings. Curiosity, for example, is about twice the weight of the Viking landers. In general, we're much more successful at landing and receiving data from mars-bound craft than we were back there; the soviets sent several probes to mars and got minimal data back from them before they fai…
Vikings, MERs and Curoisty/2020 each used totoally different landing technologies. Amazing they all worked.
Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think the atmosphere is the problem with landing heavy landers like we do on the moon. For some reason I think gravity is the main problem. The only effect I can think of the atmosphere would have is on engine efficiency, and it's so thin I doubt it's much of a consideration at all.
You are very wrong. Read the literature.
Yea I started thinking about it after I posted. Ya know, the heat and stuff.