4 ms·
My understanding is that there are three spacecraft involved: Schiaparelli, the lander; really just a technology demonstrator. The signal was lost at about lan
by david-given 10y ago
My understanding is that there are three spacecraft involved:
Schiaparelli, the lander; really just a technology demonstrator. The signal was lost at about landing. It was always intended to go into low power mode after landing to wake up later, so it's possible that the signal just didn't make it all the way to Earth, but it may also have crashed.
The ExoMars orbiter, the Trace Gas Orbiter, which carried Schiaparelli to Mars; it's just braked into orbit but has gone behind Mars and is uncontactable, but at last report everything was fine. It has (hopefully) recorded Schiaparelli's telemetry for downlinking to Earth later.
Mars Express, an existing probe in orbit around Mars; it has also been recording Schiaparelli's telemetry; it can't decode the packets, but it can be used for doppler analysis.
Right now Mars Express is downloading its data. They say it'll take about 10 minutes. I don't know whether that data will be enough to say whether Schiaparelli landed safely or not. I do know that it'll be a while until all the data from both orbiters is downloaded and analysed, and by then Schiaparelli may have woken up and called home (I don't have the schedule to hand), so it's not a writeoff yet.
Edit for clarification: Turns out that TGO was actually doing its engine burn while out of contact from Earth (very small engine burning for a very long time), so when it comes out from behind Mars we'll know whether it made it into orbit or not. I should have actually guessed that from playing KSP.
- indexerror 10y ago> so it's possible that the signal just didn't make it all the way to Earth You make it sound like the signal was lost in between somewhere :)
- tombone12 10y agoWell yeah, scattered out of the antenna line of sight by the martian atmosphere.
- godelski 10y agoOne might say that it is lost in space.
- david-given 10y agoThe Space Kraken is surprisingly good at absorbing radio waves. ...but seriously, it's a small battery powered vehicle with a tiny antenna, and it's trying to be heard from between 50 to 100 million kilometres away, and even in the best case it's just been tumble dried, blowtorched, hammered with explosive charges, and then dropped a couple of metres. I wouldn't be surprised if it lost some signal strength. Mars Express was supposed to record the doppler shift of the carrier wave on descent, so should be able to pick up any landing signal. We'll see when they release the results.
- Gibbon1 10y agoIt's probably under the couch.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jessriedel 10y ago> so when it comes out from behind Mars we'll know whether it made it into orbit or not. The orbiter successfully inserted into orbit, but the lander has not responded and things look grim. In particular, when they replayed lander's signal as heard by the MarsExpress satellite, it cut out as exactly the same time as was heard directly from Earth. That makes it more likely the lander stopped transmitting in the middle of its descent, rather than having its signal blocked on the way to Earth. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/science/esa-mars-lander.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/science/esa-mars-lander.ht...
- CamperBob2 10y agoLink contains autoplaying sound