New Bid Fails To Raise Beagle (Mars)

Thank you for your reply.

I was curious as to what the specifics were for all the uplinking and downlinking taking place between the several orbiting satellites around Mars and the Earth-based DSN (Deep Space Network) 'dishes' and the various rovers on Mars proper - and discovered this:

Red Planet Calling: How Mars Probes Phone Home
By Tariq Malik
Staff Writer
posted: 06:00 am ET
08 October 2003
With four spacecraft from three space agencies on the way to Mars, a communications crunch at the Red Planet is hardly unexpected. But managers of NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) believe they are ready to handle the traffic.
The network is Earth's prime hotline for planetary and deep space missions launched by NASA and other space agencies. It includes tracking stations in Australia, Spain and California responsible for receiving signals from all of the Mars probes, as well as the Cassini mission to Saturn and Stardust's Wild-2 comet rendezvous among others.
"We've made all of our transmitters uniform to spread the [communications] load out better," said Rich Miller, manager of Office of Plans and Commitments NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena California. "And we're perfecting a way to track the Mars missions in particular." Miller's office is part of JPL?s Interplanetary Network Directorate responsible for the DSN.
...
Express call from Mars
ESA's Mars Express, an orbiter that also carries the British landing probe Beagle 2, is expected to reach the Mars sometime around Dec. 25. Like the other Mars-bound probes, Mars Express is using the DSN as its communications lifeline with Earth. It is not, however, ESA's only means of deep space communication.
...
Unlike Mars Express, Beagle 2 cannot communicate directly with Earth and will relay signals via the orbiting Mars Express and the aid of two NASA satellites, Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), already circling the planet. Once Beagle 2 lands on the surface of Mars' Isidis Planitia, for example, it will begin broadcasting a nine-tone call sign composed by the rock group Blur until Odyssey receives and relays it back to Earth.
...

Fetching signals on two fronts
Rounding out the Mars mission mayhem are NASA's two identical MER rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, expected to land in January 2004. Both rovers contain two methods of communication, one for Mars-Earth messages and another for Mars-Mars orbit.
"In cruise and prior to arrival at Mars, the rovers use only the X-band system and broadcast with high and low gain antennas," said Matt Wallace, surface mission manager for Opportunity.
Once on the Martian surface, the rovers can communicate with Earth directly with their onboard X-band systems, or up to MGS of Odyssey using a UHF antenna. "We get four chances to reach the orbiters each day; two for MGS and two for Odyssey," Wallace said.
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Entire article:

www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/calling_mars_031008.html

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