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THurty -two years today, on August 21, 1993, the NASA March observer became strangely silent – a few days before he entered Martian orbit. Robotic crafts, represented in this illustration, was sent to inspect the atmosphere, geology and climate of the planet. He took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida in September 1992. But after entering a fatal fall suspected about three days in March, he has not been heard since.
It is not the only tragic Martian accident: so many misadventures have been transpired on the way to the red planet, in fact, that a mythical space monster called the “large galactic gaule” was said to search the Mars probes.
A major obstacle to Martian missions: the red planet is quite difficult to land. It has a super thin atmosphere, which represents less than 1% of the density of the earth, which offers little drag for slow vessel commitments. This means that probes can infiltrate the surface of the red planet if their parachutes and their airbags are not properly designed to use the unclean atmosphere of Mars. Things are only becoming more difficult with larger vehicles, which might be necessary if we finally find ourselves transport settlers to Mars.
It is also difficult to call in Mars, which is around 140 million kilometers from the land, on average. At this distance, radio signals can be delayed up to 20 minutes in each direction. In addition, the sun hinders approximately every 26 months: when our star is swinging between March and Earth, it blocks radio signals and causes a two -week communication power failure.
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Facing these countless challenges on six decades of Mars missions, space agencies have learned precious lessons.
As for Mars observe, a fuel leak in the propulsion system could have led to the disappearance of the probe, suggested a report by NASA, among other potential problems. Investigators noted that the equipment of the spacecraft had been initially created for trips in terms of land, a measure of seed seeds. In the end, the missing probe proved that the cup of the corners in space can be expensive.
Image of lead: NASA / JPL
