"And that's four. One more and I'll have the whole collection, oh goody!"
Posted on 12/10/2003 7:46:11 PM PST by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
Canada's first space mission outside Earth's orbit -- a $5-million instrument aboard the crippled Japanese probe Nozomi -- has missed Mars and is now officially out of action for good.
The project, led by University of Calgary professors, was launched five years ago to study the thin atmosphere on Mars.
But Japan couldn't do the manoeuvres required to insert the probe Nozomi into orbit around Mars.
The probe carrying the Canadian-made instrument designed to measure the Martian atmosphere flew on by and will drift through space indefinitely.
Physics and astronomy professor Andrew Yau of the University of Calgary's Institute for Space Research headed up the research project.
Yau was out of the country Tuesday and unavailable for comment, but a university research communications spokesman said exploring space always has unknowns and some failure has to be expected.
"For space research, it's the nature of the game," said Dennis Urquhart.
He said lessons can be learned from the loss, including how to properly predict and understand solar storms so researchers can avoid the same problems in the future.
Canadian space officials see one bright spot -- important partnerships have been made with other countries.
"This is not a total loss for the Canadian space program," said Alain Berinstain, the Canadian Space Agency's acting director of planetary exploration and space astronomy.
He said in a statement the instrument "has positioned Canada as a preferred supplier" of science and technology.
"It has opened doors to current and future collaborations with Japan and with other countries involved in the exploration of the solar system."
Berinstain couldn't be reached to answer questions about the instrument. But his comments echo the longstanding belief that, while Canada can't afford to do everything in space, we can be very successful at parts of missions run by other countries.
Nozomi, whose name means hope, is the latest in a stream of unmanned probes to fail on the way to the Red Planet, or to crash into Mars on arrival.
About two-thirds of the 34 previous Mars probes -- all from the United States, Russia or the former Soviet Union -- have been lost.
And, even as Nozomi coasts into a new orbit that will just circle the sun for thousands or millions of years, three more Mars probes are racing toward the end of their journeys.
The European Space Agency has a probe expected to land on Christmas Day.
And a pair of NASA probes is scheduled to land soon after -- one in early January and one in late January.
So far, these three all appear to be luckier than Nozomi.
M2K4!!
Or at least that's what they told you.
Uhuh. I'm sure Canada is among the top twenty nations for supplying space technologies.
"And that's four. One more and I'll have the whole collection, oh goody!"
"So I guess the moral here is 'Never throw a used fuel
pump from a Russian Rocket Missile into Possum Lake'"
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