Due to the postponed Space Shuttle Discovery landing, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter pre-launch press conference and mission science briefing is today at 1 p.m. EDT, at the NASA News Center, Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Fla.


Pre-launch press conference participants:

Doug McCuistion, Mars Exploration Program Director
NASA Headquarters, Washington

Chuck Dovale, NASA Launch Manager
KSC

Mike Jensen, Vice President and Chief Technical Officer
International Launch Services, McLean, Va.

Jim Graf, MRO Project Manager
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif.

Clay Flinn, U. S. Air Force Atlas V Launch Weather Officer
45th Weather Squadron, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.

The mission science briefing immediately follows the pre-launch press conference.

Participants:

Michael Meyer, Mars Exploration Program Chief Scientist
NASA Headquarters

Richard Zurek, MRO Project Scientist
JPL

Alfred McEwen, Principal Investigator, High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment
University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.

Scott Murchie, Principal Investigator
Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars
Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.

Enrico Flamini, Director, Solar System Programs
Italian Space Agency, Rome

The briefings, which were originally scheduled for tomorrow, will be carried live on NASA TV.

If we're lucky - they'll be fielding a lot of questions submitted to their website - including one asking if Electra will be used with MER at any point

doug

Ahh, boss is out of town, no one else here

We have a saying for this in Dutch:

"When the cat is not home, the mice dance on the table"

None of the questions I saw at the MRO site were asked - perhaps they're for a different conf?

Doug

ahh - it's on now
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/launch/event-MRO.html

We CAN communiate with the rovers..but we're not scheduled to. If something happened to Odyssey we would.

Pathfinder/Viking/MER/MPL/B2 landing sites...they cant wait to image them - very exciting to look at - important data for understanding the sites and act as a ground truth. Try to look for other landers, given the resolution and size of spacecraft we anticipate being able to look for them. Beagle we hope to find the parachute and give a big target to look at.




Doug

In English we have the same saying: "When the cat is away, the mice shall play"


Does your saying rhyme in Dutch as well?

Nope, it doesn't

I'm looking forward to the russian Probes to!

Well, Mars-3 is certainly of a size with Pathfinder, and the petals are certainly not a rocky shape, but it's position is even more uncertain than anything that came later, so we may never know for certain. At least with the Vikings and Pathfinder we have hints from the ground, and reasonably tied down locations (and perfectly identified locations for the MERs, of course). MPL, Beagle and Mars-3 will all, I suspect, be finally identified by their parachutes (and Mars-3's chute could by now be discoloured, fragmented, or covered in dust). Let's hope that MRO has an extended mission when some 'wild cards' can be tried! It'd be so nice, though!

Mars 2 (over-steep reentry, may have burned up, and /or high speed impact, presumably in pieces)

Mars 3 (went silent after landing)

Mars 6 (went silent on impact, supposedly retrofired)

Their positions are known to something like 1 degree. That's a *LOT* of terrain to image at 0.4 meter/pixel.

The landing sites were determined by launch date, arrival date, and engineering constraints on the entry trajectory and post landing communications, etc. The sites were not selected for specific site-specific science objectives.

There is no real science value in any search for the Soviet landers, while there is some engineering value and current interest value in the much easier search for Beagle 2 and Polar Lander.

But... the Soviet landers are *NOT* going anywhere, unless they get kidnapped by UFO's. When some follow-on orbiter does global mapping at say .5 meter/pixel, somebody like the nuts on this forum will be crazy enough to search for them... or eventually, they'll just be randomly run-across, perhaps in 0.1 meter.pixel images or from the ground. And somebody will have their mind blown. Wheee!

We'll find crashed Lunar Surveyors and Lunar probes and orbiters <in pieces> first.

Does anyone know if MRO is to take any test shots of the Earth and Moon?

I'm curious to see if the lander landed sideways or the parachute landed on top.

Again this just a personal interest to see them.

I think the cameras have covers over them to protect the optics till after aero-breaking, so I suspect the answer to this is no.


J

MARCI will do observations of the Moon at some point - and HiRISE will do I THINK Moon + Star focus tests. Not sure of CTX, it may do the same.

Only one post-aerobraking deployment was mentioned, and that was SHARAD

Doug

Yes, I'd remembered it wrong (or read something unclear, can't remember). On further investigation it seems the only instrument with a cover removed after aerobreaking is CRISM.

Ahh yup - thats it, I knew something was keeping a cover on but couldnt remember what

Doug

Guy Webster (818) 354-6278

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.



Dwayne Brown (202) 358-1726

NASA Headquarters, Washington



News Release: 2005-164 November 18, 2005



Mars-Bound Nasa Craft Tweaks Course, Passes Halfway Point



NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter successfully fired six engines for about 20 seconds today to adjust its flight path in advance of its March 10, 2006, arrival at the red planet.



Since its Aug. 12 launch, the multipurpose spacecraft has covered about 60 percent of the distance for its trip from Earth to Mars. It will fly about 40-million kilometers (25-million miles) farther before it enters orbit around Mars. It will spend half a year gradually adjusting the shape of its orbit, then begin its science phase. During that phase, it will return more data about Mars than all previous missions combined. The spacecraft has already set a record transmission rate for an interplanetary mission, successfully returning data at 6 megabits per second, fast enough to fill a CD-ROM every 16 minutes.



"Today’s maneuver mainly increases the speed to bring us to the target point at just the right moment," said Tung-hanYou, chief of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter navigation team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The intended nudge in velocity is 75 centimeters per second (less than 2 miles per hour). The spacecraft's speed relative to the sun is about 27 kilometers per second (61,000 miles per hour).



Four opportunities for course adjustments were planned into the schedule before launch. Today's, the second, used only the trajectory-correction engines. Each engine produces about 18 newtons (4 pounds) of thrust. The first course adjustment, on Aug. 27, doubled as a test of the six main engines, which produce nearly eight times as much thrust. Those main engines will have the big job of slowing the spacecraft enough to be captured into orbit when it reaches Mars. The next scheduled trajectory adjustment, on Feb. 1, 2006, and another one 10 days before arrival will be used, if necessary, for fine tuning, said JPL's Allen Halsell, the mission's deputy navigation chief.



The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission will examine Mars in unprecedented detail from low orbit. Its instrument payload will study water distribution -- including ice, vapor or liquid -- as well as geologic features and minerals. The orbiter will also support future missions to Mars by examining potential landing sites and by providing a high-data-rate relay for communications back to Earth.



The mission is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, for the NASA Science Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft.



For information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on the Web, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mro . For information about NASA and agency programs on the Web, visit http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html .



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