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It could theoretically land anywhere on the planet in an accident situation, some freaked out country could fire up the radar jammers, would be terrible bad luc
by VLM 11y ago
It could theoretically land anywhere on the planet in an accident situation, some freaked out country could fire up the radar jammers, would be terrible bad luck to land next to a weather radar, even if nothing bad happens it'll have Russian military aircraft loitering around the LZ and now you have the technical problem of proving every Russian aircraft radar ever made won't interfere with the landing system. I would guess if the rockets fire early the astronauts will be severely hurt (killed?) on landing so not firing early would be a priority. They didn't make it triple redundant for fun...
Also without any information its very hard to tell if this is just good old fashioned ALARA at work, or if its a real threat. On one hand a powerful source would require a smaller detector and size and mass are expensive in spacecraft. Then again the crew needs shielding from the source and they're using gammas so source intensity is also not cheap. My guess is its a combination of ALARA principle at work combined with some first responders might have radiological monitoring and that will detect it, causing a freak out unless previously warned.