NASA Struggles To Contact Lost Mars Probe 125
David Shiga writes "Just when NASA was about to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft, the probe suddenly lost contact with Earth, New Scientist Space reports. NASA last heard from the MGS probe on November 5, two days before the 10th anniversary of its launch from Earth. The MGS team is not sure yet what the problem is, but a micrometeorite could have jolted the spacecraft's main antenna out of alignment with Earth, or it might have a solar array problem and too little power to talk to Earth as a result. If they can't re-establish communication this week, NASA may try to diagnose the problem by taking pictures of MGS with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The two spacecraft come within about 100 kilometers of each other several times each week."
Not another space accident!? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd love to see a list of projects in table format that show either mission success or mission failure and the reasons behind the failure.
If anyone has a link, please post!
Opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)
I had been wondering why updates from Opportunity had been so scarce over the last couple of weeks, given that the rover has reached the most interesting part of its traverse.
The communication bottleneck created by the MGS problem may be partly to blame.
Gives me a warm feeling.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's have a big hand for the human race, people..
Re:Orbital Traffic Jam... (Score:5, Interesting)
Rovers did have a "Y1K" issue (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mech Failures Happen, Take Advatage Of It (Score:2, Interesting)