Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mission Takes Shape

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Speaking of MR.O, which will contain a ground-penetrating radar, whatever happened to MARSIS on the Mars Express? A study of the dangers of unfolding it was supposed to be completed a couple of months ago?

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"Its full of stars!"

According to this New Scientist article, deployment was further delayed, in October, to no earlier than March 2005, when Mars Express stops going into Mars' shadow.

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Danke schon! ....I knew they should've put feedback control on that thing"

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"Its full of stars!"

I couldn't be thrilled in any way for this mission. I'm sorry, but there are some pretty good satelites around mars as we speak, and other then the Shadar, it seems like this mission bring nothing to the table other then "newer pictures". I know of course that they probably do a ton of other stuff, but on the surface I seems like nothing new.

It's a snack between the rovers and the Phoenix mission, which I think they could have invested diffrently. I'm sorry but my priorities aren't with the whole "race to Mars", and I certainly don't like the whole hype the media makes of finding water all the time on that planet, and it looks like this satelite will just do the same as the rovers are doing right now: find even more water. By now you'd think that the whole planet is immerged in the stuff.

You should read up on the mission here. I'm sure you'll find that the MRO is much more than a simple piece of eye candy engineering.

...John...

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"There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is 'idiot'."
-- Larry Niven

Errrr....... have you seen any of the pictures from Opportunity?, no other location where probes have landed look anything like that, no where on Earth looks like that either.

And if you have so little interest in Mars why are you in a Mars forum?

Heh, well, considering the evidence, it just might still be immersed, just not in the Terran sense.

A good chunk of our interest in Mars is the hunt for life, past, present and future. Water is a key to this. We're seeing evidence of major water presence in the past and we're looking at pictures which could well signal its presence in some minute form even today. Which means that even if there's no life there now, there could be someday.

You come down on the hunt for water, but I remind you that the hunt is not only driving Martian exploration, its also driving Lunar exploration (Clementine, among others) and the proposed JIMO mission back to the Galilean satellites.

The hunt for water in the solar system is as crucial as any other mission we launch, because while other missions tell us about the places we'll likely never be able to go, missions looking for water give us a pretty good idea of where we WILL be able to go.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

I was just enjoying a Snickers Cruncher together with a cool Beck's Gold when I saw your photo #-o and thought mine was the better choice! :P

Anyway, at Mars you need both powerful orbiters and rovers working hand in hand. MRO will make images of such high res that it will in some aspects virtually reach the resolution of a nav cam on a rover. It will have instruments for remote chemical analysis. If that's not exciting, then what is?

Wiping my feet before entering the airlock. The straight science is a fantastic pursuit on its own, but its all leading somewhere in the end.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

I did, and like I said the Shadar is about the only piece of hardware that seems like a bit of scientifical appealing. The others are either allready availble on mars, or will be better in upcomming missions (like Phoenix for instance). A little repetition is good, but as far as I can see their main targets are just to get some eye-candy
(Daily global mapping and profiling, Regional surveys, Globally distributed targeting of hundreds of specific sites).
Yes so? Should we therefor spend x-illion on sending random missions with little of none scientific value?

Am I not allowed to voice my opinion on various missions? Just because I don't aprove of all missions, and don't have mars on the first spot on *my* priority list doesn't mean I dislike everything about mars.

I was more or less joking on the immersed part, plus it gave me a good opertunity to show my " water on mars" picture.

I suppose you are correct here. Maybe I'm just looking to much into this, but I saw it as one of the main reasons to start this mission. Mind you that I didn't mind to say that looking for water is bad.

MSL for instance to name one is much more packed with various instruments (like Laser Induced Remote Sensing for Chemistry and Micro-Imaging, Mars Hand Lens Imager, Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer, X-Ray Diffraction/X-Ray Fluorescence Instrument, Radiation Assessment Detector, Mars Descent Imager, Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer/Tunable Laser Spectrometer, Pulsed Neutron Source and Detector, Meteorological Package with Ultraviolet Sensor)

I'm sorry but if I look to the future on a short term scale, this mission is pretty nifty. If I look in the long run I hardly see any reason why it should be build.

One of the main justifications for MRO is to decide where MSL should land.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Future lander missions will have limited direct communications abilities without orbiting communications satellites. Isn’t some of the rational behind continually updating the orbiters to make sure the landers have a way to relay their messages? Spirit and Opportunity would have had a much harder time of it without Odyssey and Express overhead. Coming late to the post; hope I didn't duplicate!

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There's never a Greek philosopher around when you really need him.

The MRO is going to be very instrumental in deciding *where* Phoenix, as well as future landers, will be touching down. Also, the MRO is a step in a long range program to explore Mars. Sure, you could just wait until a more advanced probe shows up, but then you would be missing a step, and the potential for a major stumble is presented. Besides, by that logic, there should be no probes or landers at Mars now, and we should be waiting for... well, the first manned landing, I suppose. But then we get back to that whole missing a step or two thing....

Ride with this. If there was no valuable scientific data to be gathered that couldn't be gathered now, or if this were simply an eye candy trip, then trust me, the cash-strapped NASA would *never* have even approved this project, much less actually built the thing and enter into the final prep-steps to launch it.

...John...

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"There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is 'idiot'."
-- Larry Niven

Yes. MRO will have the most powerful and sophisticated communications relay capability yet.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

And I was taking the sentence mildly out of context for the sake of humor.
Unfortunately, that's how you came across on first reading. The search for water with these probes is twofold. One, we're looking for life in some form or another, and water is the ultimate key to it (that we know of). So any chance for the presence of water in abundance immediately sets off the possibility that there could be some kind of life. Particularly liquid water. The second is that we're still looking to leave this planet for some duration in the future. Where water exists, there also exists the possibility of long term human habitation.

With respect to the various explorations that the hunt for water fuels, you have the Moon, where no life probably ever existed, but a very close destination for long term human habitation. You have Europa, where no human will likely ever set foot, but the possibility of a life sustaining deep ocean keeps the possibility of life VERY close to the forefront. Then there's Mars, where the presence of seas of water and the ongoing presence of subsurface water (or even surface brines), dovetails both. The possibility that life may have once been there, and the possibility that human life may yet take root there.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

I share your enthusiasm for the MSL and can't wait to see it getting launched. Yet it's a sophisticated rover that needs development time. If there was a tradeoff between an overhasty development timeline and the chance for better testing (and perhaps sending two MSL at once! =D>), I would even favour to postpone the launch to 2011. Though I hope that won't become necessary.

Anyway, I remember the long and dreary post-Viking years, so I know to cherish the current approach of using every launch window to Mars. I wish we had a similar dedication in exploring places like Europa and Titan as we have in visiting Mars!

:-k To resume the water issue, does anyone know which probe will be more powerful in detecting underground aquifers: Mars Express (once its antenna gets deployed) or MRO?