Japanese mission doomed (Mars will not relent - destroys another scrawny, weak Earth probe)

Sydney Morning Herald ^ | December 10, 2003

[dead]

Japan abandoned its troubled mission to Mars yesterday, after space officials failed in their final effort to put the Nozomi probe back on course to orbit the Red Planet.

The probe, Japan's first interplanetary explorer, was set to end a five-year journey when it reached Mars next week.

But officials at JAXA, Japan's space agency, said Nozomi was off target and that they would try to fire its engines late yesterday to save the mission. It would be their final attempt because the probe was short on fuel.

JAXA spokesman Junichi Moriuma said the operation had failed, and that scientists had given up hope of salvaging the probe.

"Our mission to explore Mars is over," Moriuma told The Associated Press.

Nozomi - which means "Hope" - was to circle Mars at an average altitude of about 890 kilometres in a two-year mission aimed at determining whether Mars has a magnetic field.

It was also set to examine the evolving Martian atmosphere's interaction with the solar wind - a stream of highly charged particles coming from the sun - and offer a close-up examination of the moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos.

But malfunctions during Nozomi's journey altered its trajectory, putting the 541 kilogram probe into a course that was too low and raising concerns it might crash into the planet's surface.

AP

[FirstFlaBn]

Looks like the Martians shot down another one.

[End Times Sentinel]

Why are they covering up the clear cause of the mission's failure?

 

 

[xp38]

You keep sending us probes but...

[Jonah Hex]

"And that's four. One more and I'll have the whole collection, oh goody!"

[DeuceTraveler]

Wasn't a Russian probe destroyed some time back? We've had a few of our own go through.

[B-Chan]

Nozomi ja nai.

[Crazieman]

And afterwards, I'm going to blow up the earth, because it blocks my view of Venus.

[Stars N Stripes]

All your probes are belong to us!!!!

[Eric in the Ozarks]

ja nai, desu !

[skinkinthegrass]

Where are The Thunderbirds, when you need them?

Where! OH! Where! :))

[traumer]

After the 'lost' Russian and American probes - no answer is needed.

*** DO NOT ATTEMPT TO LAND HERE ***

[So Cal Rocket]

Part of the problem of landing a probe on Mars is that mission telemetry data takes 4-21 seconds (depending on the two planets relative position) to be transmitted from Mars to Earth (at the speed of light). Any corrections that must be made take an additional 4-21 seconds to be sent from Earth back to Mars. This delay of 8-42 seconds is too long to make any "fine tuned" mid-course corrections, so the flight parameters have to be pre-loaded into the probe's computer - and you cannot adjust it in real time.

A manned spacecraft however, could make these adjustments in real time - just as Neil Armstrong did in changing the landing site in Apollo 11, when the original site was found to be too rocky to make a safe landing.

[sigSEGV]

I believe you meant 4-21 minutes.

[So Cal Rocket]

I believe you meant 4-21 minutes.

You are absolutely right, that's what I meant despite what I wrote. I stand corrected.

Still on my first cup of coffee here on the Left Coast.

[Analyzing Inconsistencies]

Couldn't we get SOOOO much more accomplished regarding Mars (etcetera) if only government space agencies such as NASA simply offered competitive prizes like the one Charles Lindberg won for crossing the Atlantic? NASA's allowed to propose competitive prizes but unlike DARPA, NASA conveniently won't jeopardize its bureaucrats' and pet contractors' sinecures (I mean "jobs") by offering them. For more on this statist scandal from the space program which has a larger budget than all the rest of the world's civilian space agencies COMBINED:

http://www.SpaceProjects.com/prizes

[Analyzing Inconsistencies]

Related thread:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1046570/posts

Did Astrium, an ESA-anointed monopolistic contractor, actually WANT its lean-budgeted Beagle 2 Mars mission to fail in order to secure greater funding for subsequent interplanetary missions funded by increasingly stimulated European taxpayers?