What? No talk about the Mars Rover?

[Narrew]

I wish we had a camera crew there to watch the landing in real time not computer generated. I could see some alien on Mars looking into the sky thinking WTH? That is one HUGE piece of hail. Oh well I digress.

[David E. Gervais]

I was thinking, if they had a permanent satalite in orbit around mars, the future landers could save on payload by using it as a relay to send info back to earth. That way they wouldn't need such big bulky transmitters. The space could be used for more scientific equipment.

Just a thought, Cheers!

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Taz-in-Space:
I'll be interested seeing what kind of landing the next rover makes.
If sucessful, does anyone know how far apart they will be? Or how fast and far they can go?
Would be way cool to see them taking pictures of each other!

I was thinking it's a shame that one of them isn't close enough to the Beagle 2 to roll over and give it a kick and see if that doesn't get that one working.

[Captain Kwok]

Originally posted by David E. Gervais:
I was thinking, if they had a permanent satalite in orbit around mars, the future landers could save on payload by using it as a relay to send info back to earth. That way they wouldn't need such big bulky transmitters. The space could be used for more scientific equipment.

Just a thought, Cheers!

They're two satellites in permanent orbit of mars, they are the Global Surveyor and a weather satellite.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by David E. Gervais:
I was thinking, if they had a permanent satalite in orbit around mars, the future landers could save on payload by using it as a relay to send info back to earth. That way they wouldn't need such big bulky transmitters. The space could be used for more scientific equipment.

Just a thought, Cheers!

There are several permanent orbitting sattelites areound Mars. I am not sure but I suspect they can relay Messages in a pinch. To do that for all the communications isn't that efficent I don't think though. It's easier for the rover to track in on the Earth far away then to track a sattelite whipping about in a close mars orbit. Especially since the orbiters useally go into a polar orbit to make coverage of the entire planet easier. Your windows of communication would be much smaller than with direct comm back to earth. The limiting factor in bandwith isn't the transmitting power as much as it is the line of sight window. Unless you put the mars orbitter in a geo-synch orbit, and then it's not much good for anything but relaying Messages, which is an aweful waste of resources.

With a big enough antenna on Earth you could probably pick up a transmitter on mars not much bigger then a cell phone.

Geoschmo
I'm not a sattelite communications expert, but I play one on tv...

[ January 09, 2004, 11:57: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Ragnarok]

Originally posted by David E. Gervais:
I was thinking, if they had a permanent satalite in orbit around mars, the future landers could save on payload by using it as a relay to send info back to earth. That way they wouldn't need such big bulky transmitters. The space could be used for more scientific equipment.

Just a thought, Cheers!

I thought they already had something like this? I was thinking that is why they could only try at certain times to communicate with the Beagle because they had to wait for the sat. to be in the right orbit to recieve the transmission from the surface. Maybe I was mistaken. Wouldn't be the first time, that's for sure.

[gregebowman]

Hot diggity damn!! We're finally getting a president that's talking about expanding the space program. Although i doubt if men will land on the moon again before Bush leaves office, let alone before I die, it's still good to hear something like this from a sitting president. I can't wait to see what happens.