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Can Nozomi enter Mars orbit?



 
 
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Old November 20th 03, 07:19 PM
Jim Kingdon
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Default Can Nozomi enter Mars orbit?

People have hailed the upcoming arrival at Mars of NASA's two Mars
landers, Mars Express (with Beagle 2), and Japan's Nozomi. The Nozomi
team has managed to pull off quite a few workarounds for problems
they've had. Quite impressive. But based on recent reports, I wonder
if their luck is running out. In a nutshell, here is the problem as I
understand it:

However, in late December 2003/early January 2004 the craft must fire
its onboard thrusters to enter Mars orbit. The heating system will be
required for this manuever, ISAS will be attempting to recover use of
the heating system by recycling the onboard electronics hundreds of
times to try to eliminate the short.

If the heating system is working, Nozomi will be inserted into a
highly eccentric Mars orbit
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/...g?sc=1998-041A

And my question is: have they had any success in reviving the heating
system? Unless I misunderstand the reports, they've been trying since
July or so, and have not succeeded to date. Furthermore, I would
think that recycling the electronics hoping to eliminate a short would
be, well, far from assured of success.

Can any of Nozomi's instruments get useful data from a flyby only?

There has been some confused reporting in recent days about whether
Nozomi is in danger of hitting Mars. See for example
http://www.planetary.org/html/news/a..._11-14-03.html
or http://www.space.com/missionlaunches...te_031115.html .
But that isn't the real issue. In order to enter orbit, Nozomi needs
not just the ability to do a trajectory correction (which I'm not sure
is in doubt), but also needs to be able to perform a Mars insertion
burn.

Various stories: http://www.marsnews.com/missions/nozomi/

 




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