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They never were going to send it to mars. The plan was to send it out to a orbit that could reach mars if they pointed it correctly. Now that they know its fin
by extrapickles 9y ago
They never were going to send it to mars. The plan was to send it out to a orbit that could reach mars if they pointed it correctly.
Now that they know its final orbit they can compute if it will hit anything for thousands/millions of years and slightly adjust it if it does.
- gbrown 9y agoThere's no capability to adjust the trajectory at this point.
- nightski 9y agoI think he means adjust their calculated trajectory once the collision occurs.
- LyndsySimon 9y agoThey've sent one vehicle, I suppose they could send up a tow truck to repossess it...
- Theodores 9y agoThere is also the fire extinguisher in the passenger foot-well, spaceman can just use that to correct his course and get to Mars, maybe to wait for the tow truck there...
- extrapickles 9y agoAfter the burn was complete they can use the cold gas thrusters to slightly change the orbit (a few mm/s now adds up over hundreds of years)
- rocqua 9y agoI heard the batteries were only good for 12 hours. You'd need some sort of power to fire gold gas thrusters.
- extrapickles 9y agoThe final burn was about 6hrs in, so plenty of time then to do any terminal maneuvers (simulating thousands of years shouldn’t take more than an hour)