Farewall to the MGS
NASA gave up, so they say. After twenty days, they announced they have (permanently?) lost contact with their Mars Global Surveyor spaceship, which had served as a sattelite to Mars for the last ten years or so.
As an amateur astronomy fan, I kept an eye on the coming steps of the invasion to Mars. The fullfilment of this task approaches in a dramatic pace, and the MGS spaceship had substantial part in it.
Cicrling Mars, it provided various images of the planet. The most famous public pieces of information revealed by this spacecraft were that Mars was once covered with flowing water, and that it still has the remains of a magnetic field presumably connected to a past atmosphere. Its topographical images also enabled a revision of the Atlas of Mars Surface, showing the bizzare landscape of our spacely neighbour: an entire planet of frozen deserts. Can really ignite one’s imagination.
The information gathered by it proved useful, according to NASA claims, in the planning of the later Mars tasks - most notably, choosing the landing-sites of the robots that actually landed on Mars.
Decades ago, sci-fi writers speculated about little green Martians invading earth. Today it is clear that odds are much better to have wierd pale people invading - even colonizing - Mars before the green wierdows will appear here. MGS will be in the hall of fame when this invasion would happen.
After ten years at space, much more then originally planned, this mission is over. May the MGS rest in piece, hanging forever in silence around the red planet.
November 22nd, 2006 at 19:46
Hey. I like astronomy too. I follow the APOD all the time and recently complete my entire collection.
Well, with all respect to the MGS, his replacement came already: The Mars Recon Orbiter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Reconnaissance_Orbiter), The Mars Express (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Express_Orbiter) - Who gave us “A New Face” on mars (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060925.html), and the 2001 Mars Odyssey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Odyssey).
Yes, the MGS is ancient in satellite terms.
And everything about those “Surpassed expectations” is ridiculous. NASA has low expectations. I mean, who the hell counts on dust build up as the end of a rover mission and doesn’t think about anything to counteract that?