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Old June 28th 03, 07:31 AM
David Knisely
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Default Query about Mars

Bert posted:

Lets say that these Christmas Mars landers all land(that is
doubtful)


Well, there are no *landings* (note the plural) scheduled for
Christmas. There is only one landing scheduled for that day (the
British Beagle-2). The only other landings will be the Mars Exploration
Rovers, and they are scheduled to reach Mars in January of 2004
("Spirit" will reach Mars on January 4th). Unlike you, I am hopeful at
least one of these landers will make it down successfully.

Lets say half of their probing equipment works.


Lets say more than 80% works.

They find
nothing more than what the 1962 Mars lander showed us (dust and rock.)


What?!! There was *NO* Mars lander in 1962! We hadn't even soft landed
on the moon in 1962, and the first probe to Mars didn't get there until
1965! A successful Martian soft landing was not achieved until July
20th, 1976 with the Viking-1 lander, so again, you are off by about 14
years! The last lander which reached the surface succesfully was
Pathfinder in July of 1997. Where in the world are you getting your
information??

Would we go back again?


We will as long as questions remain to be answered about Mars (and even
with the new rovers, questions will remain, as many of the more
interesting areas on the planet have yet to be fully explored on the
surface).

I just hope we don't have any antenna
problems,for that has been NASA biggest problem.


Hardly. The biggest problems with NASA are lack of money and a somewhat
lack of vision.
--
David W. Knisely
Prairie Astronomy Club:
http://www.prairieastronomyclub.org
Hyde Memorial Observatory: http://www.hydeobservatory.info/

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