QUOTE (tuvas @ Dec 28 2006, 03:53 PM)
I'm glad you enjoyed the lobby. It's always nice to see true space cadets walk through there;-)
There are several spacecraft which crashed into Mars, as well as parts from other spacecraft, which we don't really have the slightest clue where they are. They range from the cruise support for the landers, to some upper stages of rockets, different orbiters that failed, etc. It's quite likely that they survived to some degree reentry (The martian atmosphere isn't really all that thick, it does well to block small meteors, but not very good to block the larger ones), but it's likely that purposely none of this will be discovered for a long time. It's fairly likely though that some day some colonist on Mars will be hiking away from the base camp and notice some nice shiney metal, which could turn out to be one of these objects, but that's about the best we could possibly hope for.
Indeed tuvas that reminds me the cruise support for the MER landers would have followed the landers into the atmosphere.indeed are the mariner 9 and viking orbiters still in orbit? early AIAA astrodynamics papers state that they are in orbits ment to comply with planetary quarentine rules( 100 years) but back then our knowledge of the mars atmosphere was poor...............................................beagle may have been done in by an error having to due with upper atmosphere density............
who knows ?
mars observer upper stage was targed away from mars but like the space craft itself there is not alot of knowledge of future trajectories for these objects.
will be driving by Ithaca new york soon maybe they have a nice lobby...............................................................