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The space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena lost contact with the probe for two days last week, then received a weak carrier signal with no data on Sunday. Since then, Surveyor has not confirmed receiving a command to point one of its transmitters to Earth, project manager Tom Thorpe said.
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We just passed MGS's 10th anniversay (launch) -- Tuesday, Nov. 7.
The photo in the article was obtained Oct. 15 (nice).
Well, if it is "dead," it did have 10 years. I'll sure miss MGS/MOC.
Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) was launched 10 years ago today, on 7 November 1996. The spacecraft reached Mars on 12 September 1997, and has been observing the ever-changing red planet over the course of the past 5 martian years.
--Cindy
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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It's too soon to give up hope. The problem may be connected with the loss of communications for several days due to solar conjunction. On Nov 5 MGS indicated it was in safe mode. Since then commands have been radiated to reconfigure the telecom subsystem.
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It's had a good run, it would be sad to lose the MOC Public Target Request Program though. It's really quite unique, although I believe there is a similar program in the works for the MRO.
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Ground Team Stays Busy on 10th Anniversary of NASA Mars Launch
On Nov. 2, one orbit after commands were sent for a routine maneuver to move the solar panels, the spacecraft reported that the motor moving one of the arrays had experienced errors. Onboard software responded as programmed, switching the spacecraft to a backup motor controller, then to a backup circuitry connection.
Of course the rest is now history with the loss of communications and with the large dish network also down it will be tougher to get back into touch with the MGS.
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The MRO is scheduled to take a photo of Global Surveyor on Friday, when the two are 93 miles apart.
MRO...to take a picture of Global Surveyor to see how the failed craft is oriented relative to the sun for power and to Earth for communications.
MRO's high-powered camera should be able to image details of Global Surveyor as small as about 10 centimeters
"We have a good chance of recovering it still," Thorpe said in an interview.
Flight controllers also plan to try to get Global Surveyor to contact one or both of NASA's roving geology stations, Spirit and Opportunity, which are located on opposite sides of Mars' equator.
The rovers would not be able to relay the spacecraft's science data but engineers would at least get an idea of its general position. The linkup also could show if Global Surveyor still has power.
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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Ten years is a good long time for anything in space to keep working without maintenance.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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Ten years is a good long time for anything in space to keep working without maintenance.
Indeed it is. The Voyagers have surpassed even this with their 29 years of operation and potentially could continue until 2020!
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Mars Global Surveyor Falls Silent - Emily Lakdawalla gives a detailed account of the problem and the rescue plans.
The first sign of a problem with Mars Global Surveyor came in the form of error messages from one of the spacecraft's two solar panels, according to mission project manager Thomas Thorpe. "We began seeing error counts after we had moved the solar panel, and those error counts indicated that the gimbal was having a problem going to the direction it was commanded to." The spacecraft switched to backup systems before its orbital path took it into eclipse, where the bulk of Mars blocks the spacecraft's view of the Sun.
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yup known as far back as the 2nd and without some photographic help by the MRO all may be lost until it spins back into the direction of the sun to recharge its batteries.
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Friday's image was taken with MRO's star-tracker camera, which has a wide field of view but poor resolution. we're not certain we could catch it in a way to make it appear different than bright stars.
That's done by comparing the position and brightness of objects in the image to stars listed in catalogs. If the star-tracker camera captured Global Surveyor, MRO's high-resolution, Boulder-built HiRISE camera will likely try to get a closeup next week.
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NASA will hold a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EST, Tuesday, Nov. 21, to discuss the status and science accomplishments of the Mars Global Surveyor. The 10-year old spacecraft is the oldest of five NASA spacecraft currently active at the red planet.
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Efforts to regain contact with the spacecraft and determine what has happened to it will continue. NASA's newest Mars spacecraft, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, pointed its cameras toward Mars Global Surveyor on Monday. "We have looked for Mars Global Surveyor with the star tracker, the context camera and the high-resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter," said Doug McCuistion, Mars Exploration Program director at NASA Headquarters. "Preliminary analysis of the images did not show any definitive sightings of a spacecraft."
The next possibility for learning more about Mars Global Surveyor's status is a plan to send it a command to use a transmitter that could be heard by one of NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers later this week.
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Would be interesting if the rovers camera system could spot it...
I find it interesting the the entire Mars Global Surveyor program cost $247 million, including launch expenses and a decade of in-flight operations. NASA had just approved a two-year mission extension for $6 million a year.
This was a probe done right from the start. The low-cost probe rose "from the ashes" of a dramatic Mars failure, Squyres said. We all recall metric versus English systems of measurement..
In 1993, the $813 million Mars Observer disappeared just before getting to the planet. Most of that probe's instruments were built again and included on the Mars Global Surveyor.
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All may not be lost just yet Europe joins hunt for missing Mars probe
NASA has called on the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft to look for the missing Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) after the Opportunity rover failed to locate it by listening for its radio beacon.
"We've asked the Mars Express people to take an image of MGS with their High Resolution Stereo Camera," Thorpe says, adding that the Mars Express HRSC team had agreed to make the attempt. They have not set a date for this attempt, but the earliest opportunity is on 7 December 2006, when the two spacecraft should come within 400 kilometres of each other.
Even though random drift of the spacecraft has led to uncertainty in its position, the field of view of Mars Express's HRSC is wide enough to include the entire area that the spacecraft could be in, Thorpe says
What drift ???
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It's probably dead, SpaceNut.
It now being off course and drifting really does not sound good.
Nice to know ESA is helping, though. Thank you to them.
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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A remote possibility to look for MGS may come in FEB. 2007 as the Rosetta probe does another flyby of Mars, this of course if the ESA does do so....
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JPL are still trying to command MGS on a daily basis.
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A remote possibility to look for MGS may come in FEB. 2007 as the Rosetta probe does another flyby of Mars, this of course if the ESA does do so....
But the key word in this is flyby. I don't recall specifics as to how close to Mars Rosetta will come, but ... a flyby likely won't reveal much if anything; likely nothing. Would depend on a number of incredibly lucky coincidences (relative distances, MGS position to that of Rosetta's, MGS being a tiny probe)...
Hopefully I'll be surprised. Not trying to sound cynical, but I'm not expecting Rosetta to be able to help out. Likely it'll be "like searching for a needle in a haystack" and a flyby course can't be altered...or won't be, just for MGS's sake.
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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But the key word in this is flyby. I don't recall specifics as to how close to Mars Rosetta will come, but ... a flyby likely won't reveal much if anything; likely nothing. Would depend on a number of incredibly lucky coincidences (relative distances, MGS position to that of Rosetta's, MGS being a tiny probe)...
Rosetta will "swing-by" Mars at an altitude of 250 kms on 25 February, well inside the orbit of MGS and going real fast.
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MGS - 2 Nov lost telemetry. Error messgaes on soalr array gimbals received. Tried to image with Mars Express and MRO. No definitve indication that we found spacecraft. Have a tem looking at failure mode. We have some indication of what happened. Want to feed lessons learne dinto operation of other spacecraft at Mars. Close out activities will continue in May 2007.
MGS compelted 34,202 orbits and returned 25,528 (should be 10x higher) images during 10 years of operations at Mars. FIna news form MGS showed that water may still be flowing on/near the surface of mars.
We think that failure that a software load we sent up in June of las t year was the cause. This software tried to synch up two flight processors. Two addesses were incorrect - two memory addresses were over written. As the geometry evolved. We drove the arrays against a hard stop and the spacecraft went into safe mode. The radiator for the battery pointed at the sun, the temperature went up, and battery failed. But this should be treated as preliminary.
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Ouch.
Pity the programmer(s) responsible
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one single misadressed comment was responsible for a cascade of bad things happening....
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la- … -headlines
According to a preliminary report from the Mars Global Surveyor operations review board, the problems with the spacecraft began in June, when a command that oriented the spacecraft's main communications antenna was sent to the wrong address. The mistake caused a problem with the positioning of the solar power panels.
The problems came to a head Nov. 2, when the spacecraft detected the positioning error and tried to go into a safe, or contingency, mode.
That exposed one of the batteries to direct sunlight, causing it to overheat.
Software on the spacecraft interpreted the overheating as an overcharged battery and shut down the charging system. As a result, the batteries drained within 12 hours, resulting in a loss of communications with Earth.
The review panel found that the management team followed procedures in dealing with the problem but that the procedures "were inadequate to catch the errors that occurred."
The review also said the spacecraft's onboard fault protection system failed to respond to the errors. Instead of protecting the spacecraft, the programmed response made it worse.
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