The fun starts on the 16th and will climax as Schiaparelli lander touches down next Wednesday
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/11/exomars_arrival/
Grab some popcorn, space enthusiasts, because this coming weekend the joint European Space Agency/Roscosmos "ExoMars" mission will arrive at Mars.
ExoMars broke the surly bonds of Earth last March and has since proven itself capable of taking photos and sending them home on a 2 Mbit/s link.
Now for the hard part.
The mission comprises two sub-missions. The first, the Schiaparelli lander, will separate from ExoMars on Sunday, October 16th. It will then spend three days circling Mars before making a six-minute descent to its surface. Schiaparelli is billed as a "landing demonstrator" that will "will test a range of technologies to enable a controlled descent and landing on Mars in preparation for future missions, including a heatshield, a parachute, a propulsion system and a crushable structure."
The heatshield is designed to help the survive its passage through the Martian atmosphere at an expected initial speed of 21,000km/hr. A pair of parachutes will then slow things further, before the propulsion system – rockets – lower it to just a couple of meters above Mars' surface. At that point the rockets will cut off and the "crushable structure" should absorb the impact.
The Entry and Descent Module Descent Camera (DECA) should shoot the whole thing.
The lander bears what the ESA calls a "small science package" that can measure "wind speed, humidity, pressure and temperature at its landing site, as well ... measurements of electric fields on the surface of Mars that may provide insight into how dust storms are triggered."
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by r1348 on Tuesday October 11 2016, @08:10PM
I know people (on Earth) who would kill for that kind of bandwidth (yeah yeah I know, latency...)
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday October 11 2016, @08:53PM
On top of which their bits travel a lot faster than mine.
I demand vacuum-fille fiber now!
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday October 11 2016, @11:36PM
Super Bob does it again! Vacuum-filled! I assume that is what you meant. I will have to just sit and think about that one for a while. Vacuum. Filled with a vacuum. Like a vacuum tube just full of vacuum. Nope, still doesn't work. Super Bob may have crossed the line this time.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Tuesday October 11 2016, @11:57PM
Admittedly an obscure reference:
http://www.cavebear.com/archive/cavebear/catalogue/fast-fiber.html [cavebear.com]
Check out the other products, including armor-piercing packets!
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday October 11 2016, @09:24PM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @09:33PM
The US is the only nation to successfully land on Mars. The Soviet Union and the UK have both tried, but failed. If this lander works, it will be the first successful non-US lander.
Mars is tricky to land on because it has strong enough gravity to require significant braking energy, yet an atmosphere too thin to rely mostly on parachutes for slowing when near the surface.
(The Soviets claimed their lander was "successful" because it did briefly send weather data from the surface, but succumbed to unknown problems shortly after touchdown. One theory is that a dust-storm, known to be in the area, pulled on the parachute and yanked the probe over such that its antenna was then pointing wrong. Unlike Viking, the Soviets had no ability to park in orbit to wait out bad weather.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @01:29AM
Let's say:
1. NASA sends a device to Mars
2. Device goes dark after landing
3. Device is sent back through space to the exact location it originated from on Earth (modified by aliens for whatever purpose)
What then?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @03:12AM
Then you get a medal for being such an astute and intelligent induhvidual and the world celebrates your astuteness before it happens! You are a special, astute and intelligent induhvidual. Your intelligence and astuteness should be recognized!
Let's call it "The Special Snowflake Medal!"
Failing that, you go back to your miserable, shitty IT job and existence and continue to dream.
Yeah, I've had a crappy day dealing with special snowflakes. No matter how hard they wish it, the world refuses to recognize and celebrate their special uniqueness. There's only so much greatness to go around.
To those who appeal to Our Lady of the Perpetually Offended and Saint Analis the Excessively Haemorrhoidal, I offer a rousing fuck you! And a hearty "Grow up!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @05:47PM
Well, since the lander is not equipped for landing on Earth, it will either burn up spectacularly in the atmosphere, or make a nice little impact crater.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @12:55PM
No telescope has ever detected any of the proclaimed curvature of the Earth. Stratospheric balloon footage does not lie either. There is an increasing number of things an landmarks that are viewed by positions impossible on a globe world, and those demand that the Earth is, at least as far as those instruments can see, flat.
No gyroscope ever detected a 'spin' of the Earth. So-called "Foucault's Pendulums" are inconclusive experiments and hoaxes, yet they are invoked as the proof of a spinning Earth. The distance between the Sun and the Earth has never been measured.
Think of what those facts mean for the place you call "space", because those light in the sky are not "other worlds" or other suns "thousands of light years away". There are just that: lights in the sky. What does that tell you about "gravity"? What makes you think that the Moon, and indeed Mars, are "places" one "goes to"?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Wednesday October 12 2016, @04:21PM
Would you people please stop using that unreliable rag as a source of information? Almost every story I've read there was sensationally missing key information. Here are some FAR better links:
ESA [esa.int]
ESA [esa.int]
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Planetary Society [planetary.org]
Space.com [space.com]
Google lists a lot more.
The Register is NOT a reliable news source. If omitting info makes a story more sensational, they'll happily omit it. IT'S A HUMOR SITE, NOT A NEWS SITE.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org