MARS - De Missies! Deel 7

Contact met Russische sonde hersteld

De Europese ruimtevaartorganisatie ESA heeft een signaal opgevangen van een Russische ruimtesonde die op zijn reis naar een maan van Mars in een baan om de aarde is blijven hangen. Het contact met de sonde ging kort na de lancering op 9 november verloren.

De Russische ruimtevaartorganisatie Roscosmos heeft in samenwerking met de ESA geprobeerd het contact met de ruimtesonde te herstellen. Dat lukte uiteindelijk woensdagochtend met behulp van een radiostation van de ESA in Australië.

De Phobos-Ground-sonde kwam vast te zitten in een baan om de aarde omdat de stuwraketten kort na de lancering dienst weigerden. De sonde was onderweg naar Phobos, een van de twee manen van Mars. Nu er weer een signaal van de sonde is opgevangen, neemt de hoop toe dat voorkomen kan worden dat het toestel uiteindelijk op het aardoppervlak neerstort.

Hopelijk wordt het net zo'n succes als de voorgaande rovermissies en de Phoenix.

En de lancering verdient natuurlijk een eigen topic, om wat meer kijkers te trekken. Lancering Mars Science Laboratory

[ Bericht 47% gewijzigd door Quyxz_ op 24-11-2011 10:59:02 ]

LOL een nieuwe space race tussen de russen en de amerikanen

PHOBOS-GRUNT SIGNALS DECIPHERED:
Russian analysts have deciphered some of the transmissions received from Phobos-Grunt on Nov. 24th. According to reports, however, the data do not reveal why the Mars probe failed to fire its main engines on Nov. 9th, when it should have left Earth orbit en route to the Red Planet. The window of opportunity to reach Mars has closed, but if Roscosmos (theRussian space agency) can regain control of Phobos-Grunt before it falls back into Earth's atmosphere, the spacecraft could be re-purposed for a different mission.

Een nieuwe kans zou 2014 zijn

Heeft dat ding de mogelijkheden om zijn baan rond de aarde 2 a 3 jaar vast te houden?

Mars departure window closing, will open later


The astronomical window for the Phobos-Grunt's mission to Mars has just about closed, believe space industry sources. The probe could still fly by the red planet, but the expedition to land on and then return to Earth from the Martian moon Phobos is a failure. The window is closed, next chance - 2014

Soon the opportunity for the Phobos probe to reach Mars will be lost. For almost two weeks no discernable feedback has been obtained from the spacecraft or for that matter any positive developments in restoring control.

Technically the Phobos probe can be classified as "alive" (since, judging by observations, it stays in its orbit and is oriented toward the Sun) but practically it is lost.

The 2011 launch window for Mars is known to span November and December. Initially, prior to liftoff, November 21 was named as the ultimate date for the Phobos-Grunt's departure to Mars (the firm belief of unnamed sources in the space industry).

But on November 14, Russian Space Agency head, Vladimir Popovkin, officially articulated a different opinion. He said the last chance to save the Phobos-Grunt mission would disappear "early in December," when the window closes.

But the probe continues stoically to ignore signals from Earth (as, incidentally, its designers taught it to do at least during orbit - no outside controls are provided for that). This means the probe is most likely to fly nowhere and its successor (if a state budget overburdened with social commitments and defense purchases manages to cough up another billion rubles) will have the opportunity to repeat the attempt no sooner than early 2014.

Open to some, closed to others
Strictly speaking, the 2011 Mars window is still open. The U.S. probe MSL (Mars Science Laboratory), which is to depart for Mars with the Mars rover Curiosity on board at the end of this week, has a launch window between November 25 and December 18.

The two probes, however, have different flight programs once in Mars' neighborhood (as dictated by the need to approach Phobos by the best route). Also, in planning a usable window, the starting orbit plays a role because it is related to flight trajectory. The Phobos has utilized its window by circling in its reference orbit, while the Americans are just at the beginning of their identified time slot.

At the turn of the century, the Americans seem to have broken the mythical "Martian curse." If anything, the success rate of their missions late in the 1990s and early 2000s (which were the first to deliver rovers to the Red Planet's surface) favorably differed from the traditional "toll" of unmanned Martian probes in former years (both Soviet Mars craft and American Mariners).

In Russia, the Martian programs have not done well so far, or more accurately, they have done pretty badly. The setbacks that have plagued Russia's Martian saga began late in the 1980s with Phobos-1 and Phobos-2 failures, were followed by a launch disaster with the Mars-96 in 1996, and are now manifested by the Phobos-Grunt.

With a total research collapse in the 1990s and personnel degradation in the early 2000s, the performance of Russia's research and development sector is, to be frank, not the best. As recent years now show, a mere injection of money no longer solves the problem of bringing the industry back to health and stabilizing the quality of the work.

The systemic crisis of Russia's space effort is so deep that comprehensive and long-term measures are required to restructure at least the education and management sectors. In this sense, money alone will not open the next window to Mars.

Flying by 2018
In 2018, the Earth will see a great opposition to Mars (when the planets pass each other at minimum distance). These times of great opposition (they occur once every 15 to 17 years) are viewed as the most convenient launch windows for space missions - they cut most of the time a crew is exposed to space radiation during the flight.

The Mars-500 experiment, which was completed recently and which simulated a manned flight to Mars, was conducted with the 2018 launch window in mind. "Blasting off" from the Earth's reference orbit on October 10, 2017, the crew "reached" the Martian orbit on September 29, 2018 and "returned home" on October 10, 2019.

However, the Earth is clearly not prepared to use this window for sending astronauts to Mars - the leading powers will not shoulder such a mission either technologically or financially. Especially since, with current scientific and engineering knowledge, there are great doubts about protecting a crew against cosmic radiation.

However, the next opposition - in 2035 - is seriously regarded by the Americans as a convenient distant target for their space effort. By abandoning an immediate return to the Moon under Obama, a project set as a strategic guideline by George Bush, the U.S. has set its sights even higher.

On the one hand, this kind of mission to Mars is easy to drop: a repeated Moon flight involving new materials and technology is less challenging than a two-year expedition into the solar system.

On the other hand, the distinctive objectives of such a project may call for research and development efforts capable of yielding a mass of new technology. Even if the Martian mission is called off and the 2035 Martian window closes like the previous ones.

The views expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

Russia wants to focus on Moon if Mars mission fails


[ Bericht 1% gewijzigd door -CRASH- op 25-11-2011 23:52:41 ]

Veteran Mars Researcher Says Curiosity Spacecraft Can Confirm Viking Detected Life


^{by Staff Writers
Goodyear AZ (SPX) Nov 30, 2011}


NASA has repeatedly stated that its new mission to Mars, Curiosity, carries no life detector. Yet, Gilbert V. Levin, Experimenter on NASA's 1976 Viking Mission, disagrees. He says instruments aboard Curiosity can confirm his published claim that his Labeled Release (LR) experiment detected living microorganisms on Mars.

Dr. Levin was Experimenter and Dr. Patricia Ann Straat Co-Experimenter on the experiment that produced evidence of life on Mars. Because another Viking instrument failed to find organic matter, the stuff of life, NASA discounted the LR results. Since Viking, Mars missions have sought only evidence of habitability, not life itself.

Levin now claims the organic analyzers and the high-resolution camera on Curiosity as his "stealth life detectors."

After twenty years of analyzing the LR data, reviewing flaws in Viking's organic detector, and studying new information on life obtained from Mars and Earth, Levin finally announced his "life claim" in a 1997 publication.

today, he said that, should Curiosity detect organic matter, the last obstacle to his claim to life on Mars will vanish. Co-Experimenter Straat agrees with Levin, saying, "I look forward to Curiosity data that may confirm our life interpretation of the LR."

Levin's other "virtual experiment" is Curiosity's high-resolution camera. It might determine whether "lichen-like" colored patches Levin found on rocks at the Viking sites might be living organisms.

Patricia Straat, and JPL's William Benton assisted him in the study which subjected images of the Mars rocks and terrestrial rocks bearing lichen to the Viking Imaging System. Visible and infrared spectral analyses found the same responses from the Mars and terrestrial images (Levin, G. V., P. A. Straat and W. D. Benton, "Color and Feature Changes at Mars Viking Lander Site," J. Theoret. Biol., 75, 381-390, 1978 - available at gillevin.com, tab "Mars Research").

Levin has now written Dr. Mike Malin, designer of Curiosity's camera, asking him to seek and take high-resolution pictures of any such patches, hoping to determine whether Viking found living organisms on the rocks.

Levin (see biog. gillevin.com) started his Mars life-seeking efforts in 1958. Funded by NASA, he began developing the LR. In 1969, NASA appointed Levin as Team Member of the IRIS experiment aboard the 1971 Mariner 9 Mars orbiter. Dr. Straat joined that effort in 1970. They sought organic gases in the Martian atmosphere.

None were found, but recent observers of Mars have claimed detecting methane, possibly of microbial origin. Following Viking, Levin was appointed Team Member of NASA's MOx experiment aboard the Russian '96 Mission to Mars, converting that soil analysis instrument to give it life detection capability. However, the spacecraft crashed after launch.

"This is a very exciting time," says Levin, now an adjunct professor at Arizona State University, Tempe, "something for which I have been waiting for years. At the very least, the Curiosity results may bring about my long-requested re-evaluation of the Viking LR results."

Levin says this is especially important because Viking was sterilized to prevent contaminating Mars with hitchhiking terrestrial microorganisms. Since then, none of the many NASA and ESA Mars landers, including Curiosity, have been sterilized. Thus, any new findings of life might be questioned as to whether the life was indigenous to Mars or came from Earth.

Levin stresses, "The Viking LR life detection data are the only data that will ever be available from a pristine Mars. They are priceless, and should be thoroughly studied."

Mars Daily.com

[ Bericht 2% gewijzigd door -CRASH- op 30-11-2011 19:09:24 ]

Volg de reis va MSL Curiosity HIER (e.a. zoals Juno, Pioneer, Voyagers)

Toen ik de foto zag dacht ik aan die ondebroken strepen midden op de weg

quote:

Op zaterdag 17 december 2011 09:14 schreef ExperimentalFrentalMental het volgende:
16-12-2011

Rest Russische Marssonde stort te pletter op Aarde

[ afbeelding ]
Van dit peperdure stuk blijft straks nog 20 kilo schroot over. © epa

De Russische Marssonde Phobos Grunt zal tussen 6 en 19 januari op Aarde terugvallen, meldt het Russische ruimtevaartbureau Roscosmos.

De 120 miljoen euro kostende Phobos-Grunt werd in de nacht van 8 op 9 november vanop Bajkonoer gelanceerd met een Zenith-raket. Doordat de motoren van de baaninjector Fregat niet startten, bleef de eerste Russische Marsverkenner sinds de mislukte Mars-96 in een lage baan rondom de Aarde steken. De enkele pogingen waarin (via een grondstation van het Europese ruimtevaartbureau ESA) contact lukte, leidden niet tot redding van de sonde.

Die zal nu volgens de voorlopige berekeningen tussen 6 en 19 januari een (ongecontroleerde) duik in de atmosfeer maken in een zone tussen 51,4 graden noorder- en zuiderbreedte, zegt Roscosmos. Dat is het grootste deel van het bewoond gebied van onze planeet en omvat ook Europa. De precieze plaats en datum van de terugval zullen pas enkele dagen tevoren bekend zijn.

Er zal van de 13 ton wegende sonde niet meer dan 20 kilo terugvallen, verzekert Roscosmos. De brandstof zou helemaal opbranden in de atmosfeer, zo citeerde het staatspersbureau Ria Novosti het ruimtevaartbureau.

Bedoeling van de missie was stalen van de Marsmaan Phobos naar de Aarde te brengen en een Chinese dochtersonde in een baan rond de Rode Planeet te brengen. (belga/vsv)

(HLN)

Mooi verjaardagscadeau als ie de 19de valt....

bvd