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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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Asteroid first, Moon, Mars Later | Al Jackson | Space Science Misc | 0 | September 3rd 03 03:40 PM |
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