Posted on 03/08/2006 9:35:55 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (AFP) - NASA scientists were nervous as an orbiter neared Mars after a seven-month voyage carrying the most expensive equipment ever sent to another planet.
"We have a tremendous amount of anxiety and concern at this particular point in time," said Jim Graf, project manager for the Mars Reconnaissance Observer (MRO).
"At the same time we feel confident, we have a very good spacecraft ... (and an) excellent well trained team," he said in a press conference from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
"We are about 325,000 miles (523,036 kilometers) from Mars. We're traveling at about 6,400 miles (10,300 kilometers) an hour and we are going to double our speed as we get closer to Mars," he said.
The tricky part, he said, will be maneuvering the craft into a Mars orbit. Because of the great distance, it takes 12 minutes for data to reach Earth from the craft -- and another 12 minutes for instructions to be sent back.
"There is no time for the team as a whole to react," he said.
"So we have on board all the programs we need to carry out, and the spacecraft has to do it all on its own."
"Mars is unpredictable," Graf said. The tally of travel to Mars is grim: of the 35 missions to Mars since 1960, 21 have failed.
To achieve Mars orbit, the probe's engines will begin firing at 2125 GMT on Friday for 27 minutes. That should slow the craft enough to allow its capture by Mars' gravity.
About 20 minutes later, the orbiter will disappear behind Mars for 30 minutes before it renews contact with very anxious scientists on Earth.
At first, the probe will be in a highly elliptical orbit 400 kilometers (250 miles) above Mars at the closest point and 44,000 kilometers (27,340 miles) at its apogee.
In late March, NASA engineers will start operations to bring the probe to a round orbit close to Mars so it can begin its 25-month observation mission.
The MRO carries six observation and analysis instruments to search from its outer atmosphere to below the martian surface for signs of water and ice.
There is a learning curve. As to the calculations, somebody has to oversee the total project, not leave it up to committee, but modern programming techniques are including more checking of actual software performance under stress. They might well have checking software that looks for consistency of units--one very expensive mistake would encourage that.
Nervous? What's there to be nervous about? I mean it's just a satellite. Of course it was built by government contractors who don't actually have to provide results but hey it's so much better a job than private industry could do....
But hey let's continue space exploration with a less than 50% success rate on the taxpayers' dime. That way it will only take three times as long to colonize space...
Big whoop. It's still a waste of taxpayer dollars. Eventually though, private industry will still surpass government subsidized 'exploratory' jaunts
The 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty is the massive barrier to private investment in outer space exploitation. There will be none while the Treaty is in effect.
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