Posted on 05/09/2005 6:13:26 PM PDT by mathprof
Five and a half years after it descended into the Martian atmosphere and was never heard from again, the Mars Polar Lander may have been found.
Photos taken from orbit by another NASA spacecraft, the Mars Global Surveyor, show a white dot - presumably the lander - within a dark gray oval apparently created by blast marks in the soil from the lander's rocket engine.
About 1,300 feet away is a white blob that could be the lander's parachute. The site falls within the 40-mile-long, 10-mile-wide ellipse near the Martian South Pole where the Polar Lander was expected to end up.
"The location of the candidate parachute with respect to the lander is consistent with the slight west-to-east wind seen in dust-cloud motion in the area around the time of the crash," wrote Dr. Michael C. Malin, president of Malin Space Science Systems, which operates the Global Surveyor camera, in an article that will appear in the July issue of Sky & Telescope.
The site was first suggested in 2000, but Dr. Malin said that the success last year in photographing the landing sites of the Opportunity and Spirit rovers led him to take another look at the images of the Polar Lander site, taken in 1999 and 2000.
The white blob is of similar brightness to the Opportunity and Spirit parachutes, which were made of similar material, and similar blast marks were also seen at those landing sites.
The photographs support the findings of an investigation panel that concluded that the deployment of the landing legs during descent had fooled the Polar Lander into thinking it had already touched the ground, leading it to shut off its engine while still about 130 feet in the air. In Mars' lighter gravity, the resulting fall was equivalent to jumping off a four-story building on Earth - enough force to break the spacecraft but still leave it largely intact.
"It was only a few short moments before touchdown that disaster struck," Dr. Malin wrote.
The disappearance of the $165 million Polar Lander on Dec. 3, 1999, and of the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter three months earlier, threw NASA's Mars program into disarray.
A review of the Mars program found that NASA had taken "faster, better, cheaper" too far, trying to finance both the Polar Lander and Climate Orbiter for about the same amount as the successful Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997.
The Global Surveyor team plans another pass over the Mars Polar Lander site later this year, hoping to confirm the speculations using a technique in which the spacecraft swivels as it passes over. That enables the camera to remain pointed at the target longer and improves the resolution of the images by a factor of three.
Strikes me as a total crock. I'm amazed how much stuff works great as it is, actually.
The Russians/Soviets have lost an AMAZING number of Mars Probes, a higher percentage than us, for example.
The photographs support the findings of an investigation panel that concluded that the deployment of the landing legs during descent had fooled the Polar Lander into thinking it had already touched the ground, leading it to shut off its engine while still about 130 feet in the air.
That explanation sounds like the sort of nonsense kids come up with when they are caught redhanded at something. Just wondering: how do you "fool" a machine?
I would say the opposite. To me NASA is a sense of great national pride. There is no doubt in my mind that NASA has the finest space programs in the world (robotic probes and man-in-space). One of the greatest achievements in the history of mankind was undertaken in a heroic fashion by this agency and yet you still question it's legitmacy?
It amazes me how many people would like to kill all science and exploration programs, living in the New World! Fortunately, smarter minds will keep the important exploration objectives of NASA alive. Bush was wise in deciding to have NASA plot a trip to Mars: it will change our world (for less than 1% of the US budget).
Nope. That was a probe that was supposed to return material from Solar ejecta back on earth, but crash-landed in the desert instead when airplanes failed to snag its parachute.
The guy next to the crashed lander in the far right shot is a dead giveaway. Either that or it's Armstrong on Mars.
It was a design and QA issue. The investigation states what the direct cause was. It did not assign blame. There are a couple of options we can use for blame: unexpected events/accidents, QA, operations, and design. Since it appears that the probe was operated correctly by controllers and there was no crazy dust storm (like the one that killed the Russian's first attempt to land on Mars), QA and design are at issue.
This spacecraft was one of the items that damned NASA Administrator Goldin's faster-better-cheaper program. By trying to build it fast, the design wasn't mature. By trying to do it cheap, QA wasn't done. By saying that you are doing it better, managers must cover up issues. Goldin should have known better. The rule in almost any engineering project is faster, better, or cheaper. Pick two.
Let us not forget the more recent failures, ie, the last Mars mission cycle - the Japanese craft that got fatally zapped
by a solar eruption, and the Beagle II, just off the top of my head.
Not entirely correct. The parachute never deployed because the accelerometer never gave the indication that the craft was slowing down in the atmosphere. This was because it was mounted backwards! A horrible QA failure.
Space technologies must test every aspect of operations. This is just another example. We also almost lost all information from the Huygen's space probe (ESA's probe that was hitched on Cassini that is orbit around Saturn) because of a testing issue (due to the Italian space agency). With multiple space agencies with different requirements and ethics, it is even more important to test new spacecraft and probes in all possible respects than ever before.
Dang it, you're right! I forgot that bit. The poor pilots could only watch the thing blow past them and greet the mole people. I do remember being appalled at the QA failure when I read about it.
"The photographs support the findings of an investigation panel that concluded that the deployment of the landing legs during descent had fooled the Polar Lander into thinking it had already touched the ground, leading it to shut off its engine while still about 130 feet in the air.
That explanation sounds like the sort of nonsense kids come up with when they are caught redhanded at something. Just wondering: how do you "fool" a machine?"
As I understand it, the spacecraft has a kind of motion senser or inertial sensing system that was to sense the "bump" when the spacecraft touched the surface and then shut off the retro-rockets..
Somehow, the scheduled unfolding of the "legs" the craft was to stand on, cause enough of a bump or jostled the spacecraft around enough to where that sensor was triggered, and the computer then did what it was programmed to do and shut off the retro-rockets. Problem was, this was over 100 feet above the surface so it dropped like a stone. Close, but no cigar.
So yes, you can "fool" a machine.. in fact it "thought" it was on the ground and so it shut off the retros.
Hope this helps.
Bones
Are you sure?
Why -- Captain Kirk "fooled" machines several times!
"But if we find the tires have been stolen off the lander, we need to rethink the intelligent life on Mars thing."
Either that or call AAA.
Just your typical DUMMYcrat.
Because the flag is in Nevada, of course. Don't you keep up with any of the conspiracy theories?
There you go, introducing facts into a debate.
Keep in mind that every time you link to the NYSlimes website, hundreds here will click on the link and NYSlimes will make a lot of money off of banners displayed on their website
They made $300 million in profits last year, why help them make even more?
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=nyt
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