SHHH! THEY'LL HEAR YOU!
Posted on 07/24/2005 12:59:59 AM PDT by LibWhacker
NASA is preparing to launch the largest spacecraft ever sent to Mars. The behemoth will skim relatively close to the Red Planet's surface - beaming back more data than all previous missions combined - and scout out landing sites for future Mars missions.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is scheduled to begin its six-month journey to Mars on 10 August 2005. It will blast off on an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, US.
"MRO is really the gateway to the future of Mars," says Jim Garvin, NASA's chief scientist. "It is a reconnaissance engine like no other we've ever sent." The colossal spacecraft stands two storeys high and four storeys across, weighing in at 2180 kilograms when fully fuelled.
When it begins its two-year primary science phase in November 2006, it will glide 20% closer to the surface than any of the three spacecraft now circling the planet. From an average altitude of about 305 kilometres, it will be able to take high-resolution images over an area 10 times larger than previous surveys.
Bigger, better, faster, more
With the largest communications antenna ever flown to Mars, the orbiter will be able to beam back 10 times more information per minute than any other Mars probe. "Other missions have been producing fantastic data, but they have been sending the data back through what is essentially a straw," says James Graf, the mission's project scientist.
These new, improved science measurements will help NASA scout out landing spots for future robotic landers, such as Phoenix - set to launch in 2007 - and the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover scheduled for lift-off in 2009. It will also search for safe and scientifically intriguing landing spots for future human missions. "MRO is all about finding the right places to go," Garvin told New Scientist.
All-seeing eyes
It will conduct its reconnaissance with six science instruments:
• The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) will snap pictures that can resolve objects as small as an office desk over 1% of the entire Martian surface.
• The Context Camera will put these pictures in perspective, taking a wider-angle approach to cover at least 15% of the surface.
• The Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) will be able to identify minerals over areas as small as a swimming pool. It will map the mineralogy of the globe at a resolution of 200 metres, hunting for signs of minerals deposited in a watery environment.
• The Shallow Radar (SHARAD) instrument, provided by the Italian Space Agency, will hunt for subsurface rock, ice and liquid water by scanning 500 m below the Martian surface. It boasts a vertical resolution of 10 m - higher than the MARSIS radar on Europe's Mars Express orbiter, which will probe down to about 5 kilometres.
• The Mars Climate Sounder will measure the atmosphere's water vapour, dust and temperature with a two-fold increase in sensitivity over current probes.
• Mars Color Imager will track daily weather changes.
Another instrument aims to make future landings safer. The Optical Navigation Camera will use background stars to try to find Mars's moons Phobos and Deimos based on their predicted positions. If the method works, the landers Phoenix and MSL could use it to make a more precise entry into the planet's atmosphere to land closer to their targets. MRO will also act as a relay station for communications between the landers and Earth.
Why does New Scientist call this a Spy Satellite? Its just a terestrial surveyer. Spying is looking at stuff someone else does not want you to see.
Desk size resolution is not that great. You can bust up a lot of landers on sub-desk sized bolders.
SHHH! THEY'LL HEAR YOU!
I'll believe it when it is actually in orbit collecting data. Anyone want to give odds on whether it just becomes very expensive space junk? Missions to Mars don't have a very good success rate.
So far, no sign of the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator...
Sound files also returned...
Strange sounds... could it be important?
We need more information...
What's the point of it all? We should turn the moon into a giant satellite station instead if we want to throw money away. We could build it with big, expensive remote controlled toys.
At least it won't fall out of orbit if we neglect it for a while, and taxpayers can at least view the colossal waste of their tax dollars with a cheap Wal-Mart telescope.
Rep Sheila Jackson-Stupid (D-TX) begs to differ.
"HiRISE
The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment or HiRISE camera will consist of a 0.5 metre reflecting telescope, the largest of any deep space mission, and has a resolution of 0.3 metre at a height of 300 km. It will image in three colour bands, blue-green, red and near infrared.
To facilitate the mapping of potential landing sites, HiRISE can produce stereo pairs of images from which the topography can be measured to an accuracy of 0.25 metre."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Reconnaissance_Orbiter#HiRISE
The bottom line: humans civilization expanding though out space.
what do you mean by satellite station?
Are you kidding? Desk sized resolution is great at 300 KM.
No doubt about it. Every time one our sats. gets close; bam! Gone; scratching head time at NASA.
No doubt it will crash, not signal, be destroyed for some unseen reason...but, you still have to try..
Yeah, great for sure. Desks the size of 10 inch 7/11 Big Gulp sodas.
Cool! IMAX
So that's where the "Huge Spy" is hiding?
Can you imagine what "they" are going to do with all that money we are sending to the red planet?
And here we thought we had spent just about all of it lining the pockets of Halliburton in Iraq!
And they think we are gullible.
"The bottom line: humans civilization expanding though out space."
Correct, just as humanity has done since we crawled up on land. It's in our nature to explore and expand. Please pardon my tinfoil hat on this subject but I can help but wonder if "they" know something about Mars that they arent telling "us".
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