Mars inSight Mission
Discussion
Beati Dogu said:
They'll slowly roll them out over a 3 month period.
Edit: The seismometer will be first, and then its protective cover. The mole will take a couple of months alone to hammer its way as much as 16 feet deep.
Shout out to the two little satellites that accompanied Insight on its way to Mars. These cereal box size cube satellites were able to record & relay Insight's signal back to earth. They will continue to do so for some time as they wing past the planet.
Cube sats can actually be much smaller than a box of serial, they come in different sizes starting with 1 Unit, I may just get my bowl of serial in it. Go to this linky http://www.cubesat.org/s/cds_rev13_final2.pdf . When you understand and how far miniaturisation of the technology has come you realise you do not need something the size of mini to have a complex satellite. GES is a major UK ground station they pick up lots of data as array's of these things come overhead. there are a number of ground stations around the globe so the data can be continually monitored. Edit: The seismometer will be first, and then its protective cover. The mole will take a couple of months alone to hammer its way as much as 16 feet deep.
Shout out to the two little satellites that accompanied Insight on its way to Mars. These cereal box size cube satellites were able to record & relay Insight's signal back to earth. They will continue to do so for some time as they wing past the planet.
Edited by Beati Dogu on Tuesday 27th November 00:30
Its because off the huge step change in the capability of Cube sats is the reason Virgin Orbit and the others have found it financially feasible to bring along new launch systems and that in turn makes it cheaper. it is the same miniaturisation and step change on electronics and software that has allowed Virgin, space X and blue origin to be come viable, not that they have invented something new but have taken advantage of the changes and do not have legacy launch assets they are trying to sweat commercially.
Edited by Toaster on Tuesday 27th November 07:29
Eric Mc said:
Agreed. They have a great track record - although their earliest attempts at space probes were not that successful. At one point NASA was seriously considering giving up on them. How times changed.
Presumably the turnaround was Voyager? That seemed to set the tone for their deep space stuff since then, and still nominally operational 4 decades later.The MarCo's are a bit bigger than a cereal packet, but bloody tiny considering how far they were designed to go.
I've not heard any more about it recently, but Surrey Satellites in Guildford flew one some time back using a mobile phone as a backup sensor and computer package, to test if they could use a phone as the main control system. Cheap, off the shelf, and very small.
I've not heard any more about it recently, but Surrey Satellites in Guildford flew one some time back using a mobile phone as a backup sensor and computer package, to test if they could use a phone as the main control system. Cheap, off the shelf, and very small.
Toaster said:
Cube sats can actually be much smaller than a box of serial, they come in different sizes starting with 1 Unit, I may just get my bowl of serial in it. Go to this linky http://www.cubesat.org/s/cds_rev13_final2.pdf . When you understand and how far miniaturisation of the technology has come you realise you do not need something the size of mini to have a complex satellite. GES is a major UK ground station they pick up lots of data as array's of these things come overhead. there are a number of ground stations around the globe so the data can be continually monitored.
Its because off the huge step change in the capability of Cube sats is the reason Virgin Orbit and the others have found it financially feasible to bring along new launch systems and that in turn makes it cheaper. it is the same miniaturisation and step change on electronics and software that has allowed Virgin, space X and blue origin to be come viable, not that they have invented something new but have taken advantage of the changes and do not have legacy launch assets they are trying to sweat commercially.
that's very interesting.Its because off the huge step change in the capability of Cube sats is the reason Virgin Orbit and the others have found it financially feasible to bring along new launch systems and that in turn makes it cheaper. it is the same miniaturisation and step change on electronics and software that has allowed Virgin, space X and blue origin to be come viable, not that they have invented something new but have taken advantage of the changes and do not have legacy launch assets they are trying to sweat commercially.
Edited by Toaster on Tuesday 27th November 07:29
hidetheelephants said:
Eric Mc said:
Agreed. They have a great track record - although their earliest attempts at space probes were not that successful. At one point NASA was seriously considering giving up on them. How times changed
.
Presumably the turnaround was Voyager? That seemed to set the tone for their deep space stuff since then, and still nominally operational 4 decades later..
hidetheelephants said:
Presumably the turnaround was Voyager? That seemed to set the tone for their deep space stuff since then, and still nominally operational 4 decades later.
No, a bit earlier. NASA started using the JPL almost as soon as NASA was set up in 1958. Their initial probes were aimed at the moon and were extremely unsuccessful. The first really major project they were given (1961) was the Ranger series but every single one of them was a failure until they got to Ranger 7 - which impacted the moon in 1964. It was because of the Ranger problems that NASA became a bit disillusioned with the JPL. However, in the same period (1962) they did have a successful Venus flyby (Mariner 2) and that encouraged NASA to keep giving them second and third chances. In 1965 they had a successful flyby of Mars (Mariner 4).
At this time, JPL policy was to build two of each spacecraft because it was expected that at least one of them would fail at some point - and that was borne out by many of these early probes.
Ranger - lunar probe - Rangers 1 to 6 failures. 7 to 9 successful (1961 to 1965)
Mariner 1 and 2 - Venus flybys - 1 a failure, 2 successful (1962)
Mariner 3 and 4 - Mars flyby - 3 a failure, 4 successful (1964)
Mariner 5 - Venus flyby - successful (1964)
Mariner 6 and 7 - Mars flybys - both successful (1969)
Mariner 8 and 9 - Mars orbit - 8 a failure and 9 a success (1971-72)
Those missions cover the period 1961 to 1971. From 1971 onwards, the JPL designed missions became a lot more reliable and the successes now outweigh the failures by quite a margin.
Not TOO lucky. This mission is not looking for interesting scenery or interesting surface features. Its mission is to explore "what lies beneath" so the priority was to get down safely. They purposely picked an area that was known to be flat and fairly smooth. However, the lander is small and not that high off the ground. As a result, even a small boulder could have caused an issue - and even the best resolution possible from the various Mars orbiters would not be good enough to pick out a boulder that could have damaged or overturned the lander.
It was very similar to the problems JPL faced back in 1976 with selecting landing sites for the two Viking landers. However, we have much better images of Mars now than we did in 1976 so the "gamble" of choosing where to land was a lot less risky than 42 years ago.
It was very similar to the problems JPL faced back in 1976 with selecting landing sites for the two Viking landers. However, we have much better images of Mars now than we did in 1976 so the "gamble" of choosing where to land was a lot less risky than 42 years ago.
I sat in school as a young boy as the wheeled out the TV to watch the Apollo missions and that seemed to be the ultimate achievement of mankind but this stuff is just incredible. I have no idea how they communicate over this distance and co-ordinate and programme the landings. It must be incredible to be part of this "event" I am simply in awe of all of them. The speed, acceleration and progress made in Space travel is just incredible and who knows where we might be in just 20 years time.
johnxjsc1985 said:
I sat in school as a young boy as the wheeled out the TV to watch the Apollo missions and that seemed to be the ultimate achievement of mankind but this stuff is just incredible. I have no idea how they communicate over this distance and co-ordinate and programme the landings. It must be incredible to be part of this "event" I am simply in awe of all of them. The speed, acceleration and progress made in Space travel is just incredible and who knows where we might be in just 20 years time.
To be fair, inSight is not that cutting edge. The technique they used for landing was pretty much what was used for the Vikings 42 years ago. The spacecraft itself is heavilly based on Mars Phoenix which landed on Mars in 2008.One of the experiments carried on board is a heat flow experiment - which is pretty much identical in principle to the heat flow experiments carried out by the Apollo astronauts on the moon in 1971 and 1972. The difference is that the drill has to work itself. The Apollo drill was a hand operated device.
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