MARS - De Missies! Deel 7

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Op zaterdag 3 april 2010 09:33 schreef ExperimentalFrentalMental het volgende:
31-03-2010

Marsfoto's gemaakt op verzoek van publiek

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Op woensdag 3 maart 2010 08:26 schreef ExperimentalFrentalMental het volgende:
01-03-2010

Europese ruimtesonde nadert Marsmaantje tot op 67 kilometer

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Op woensdag 3 maart scheert de Europese ruimtesonde Mars Express rakelings langs het grootste Marsmaantje Phobos. De kleinste afstand, die om 21.55 uur 's avonds wordt bereikt, bedraagt 67 kilometer - iets meer dan aanvankelijk de bedoeling was. De scheervlucht zal worden benut om meer te weten te komen over het inwendige van het maantje.

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Op donderdag 15 april 2010 23:21 schreef Boswachtertje het volgende:

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Geen Face on Mars?

Verder leuk en interessant!
[..]

Is hier nog meer van bekend? Las ergens dat Phobos schijnbaar voor 1/3e hol is, maar heb er nog niets van terug kunnen vinden..

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Op donderdag 15 april 2010 23:39 schreef -CRASH- het volgende:

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Ik denk dat het woordt "hol" wat overdreven is.
Je kunt beter poreus zeggen.

ESA images

Mars Express Blog

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File image
by Staff Writers
Moscow, Russia (RIA Novosti) Jul 20, 2010
U.S. NASA does not have capacities to build an asteroid mission spacecraft by 2015, the head of Roscosmos' manned flights department, Alexei Krasnov, said in the wake of NASA's announcement to create the spacecraft for deep space missions.
On July 15, NASA unveiled its plans to send astronauts to an asteroid and to Mars no later than 2015.

Earlier in April, U.S. President Barack Obama said in his speech on U.S space industry development that the astronauts would likely to fly to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars in the mid-2030s, but NASA was ready to boost the process saying the development of the spacecraft for manned deep space missions should be started as early as 2015.

"It is unreal by 2015," Krasnov said.

"[They] probably won't be able to any sooner than by 2023-2025. They do not have the necessary spacecraft, and we will be ready with the project by 2018-2020".

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Spirit May Never Phone Home Again
<sup>by Dr. Tony Phillips
Science@NASA

Huntsville AL (SPX) Aug 02, 2010



Last year, Spirit became stuck in loose sand. This prevented the rover from driving to a sun-facing slope for the winter.</sup>

NASA mission controllers have not heard from Mars rover Spirit since March 22 as the rover faces its toughest challenge yet - trying to survive the harsh Martian winter.
On July 26, mission managers began using a paging technique called "sweep and beep" in an effort to communicate with Spirit.

"Instead of just listening, we send commands to the rover to respond back to us with a communications beep," said John Callas, project manager for Spirit and its twin, Opportunity, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "If the rover is awake and hears us, she will send us that beep."

Spirit is probably in a low-power "hibernation" mode. The rover was not able to get to a favorable [sun-facing] slope for its fourth Martian winter, which runs from May through November.

The low angle of sunlight during these months limits the power generated from the rover's solar panels. During hibernation, the rover suspends communications and other activities so available energy can be used to recharge and heat batteries, and to keep the mission clock running.

Based on models of Mars' weather and its effect on available power, mission managers believe that if Spirit responds, it most likely will be in the next few months. However, there is a very distinct possibility Spirit may never respond.

"It will be the miracle from Mars if our beloved rover phones home," said Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program in Washington. "It's never faced this type of severe condition before - this is unknown territory."

Because most of the rover's heaters are not being powered this winter, Spirit is likely experiencing its coldest internal temperatures yet - minus 55 degrees Celsius (minus 67 degrees Fahrenheit). During three previous Martian winters, Spirit communicated about once or twice a week with Earth and used its heaters to stay warm while parked on a sun-facing slope for the winter.

As a result, the heaters were able to keep internal temperatures above minus 40 degrees Celsius (which is also minus 40 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale).

Spirit is designed to wake up from its hibernation and communicate with Earth when its battery charge is adequate. But if the batteries have lost too much power, Spirit's clock may stop and lose track of time.

The rover could still reawaken, but it would not know the time of day, a situation called a "mission-clock fault." Spirit would start a new timer to wake up every four hours and listen for a signal from Earth for 20 minutes of every hour while the sun is up.

The earliest date the rover could generate enough power to send a beep to Earth was calculated to be around July 23. However, mission managers don't anticipate the batteries will charge adequately until late September to mid-October.

It may be even later if the rover is in a mission-clock fault mode. If Spirit does wake up, mission managers will do a complete health check on the rover's instruments and electronics.

Based on previous Martian winters, the rover team anticipates the increasing haziness in the sky over Spirit will offset longer daylight for the next two months.

The amount of solar energy available to Spirit then will increase until the southern Mars summer solstice in March 2011. If we haven't heard from it by March, it is unlikely that we will ever hear from it.

"This has been a long winter for Spirit, and a long wait for us," said Steve Squyres, the principal investigator for NASA's two rovers who is based at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. "Even if we never heard from Spirit again, I think her scientific legacy would be secure. But we're hopeful we will hear from her, and we're eager to get back to doing science with two rovers again."

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Opportunity Back To Normal Operations
<sup>by Staff Writers

Pasadena CA (SPX) Aug 02, 2010</sup>



Opportunity's activities were impacted by the Odyssey spacecraft safe-mode event. However, with the recovery of Odyssey, normal operations with the rover have resumed.
Direct-to-Earth (DTE) X-band communications and some Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter relay passes were used by Opportunity, while Odyssey was unavailable to support data relay.

On Sol 2309 (July 23, 2010), Opportunity collected remote sensing images along with an atmospheric argon measurement with the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS).

On Sol 2311 (July 25, 2010), driving resumed with a 20-meter (66 feet) east/southeast backward drive, followed by an 8-meter (26 feet) test of backwards-driving hazard avoidance. The hazard avoidance test was successful and supports the use of hazard avoidance for backward driving on longer drives.

As of Sol 2313 (July 27, 2010), solar array energy production has improved to 533 watt-hours, atmospheric opacity (Tau) was re-calibrated and now reports a higher value of 0.558 with the solar array dust factor of 0.795.

Total odometry is 21,860.62 meters (21.86 kilometers, or 13.58 miles).