| Popis: |
It is 2:01 a.m. Pacific time September 23, 1999. Having fallen through interplanetary space for nine and a half months, the US$125 million Mars Climate Orbiter is beginning1 to fire its on-board 640 N rocket engine. This is the long-awaited sixteen-minute Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI) burn, slowing the craft in order to place it into a fourteen-hour elliptical orbit over the planet’s poles. Its planned mission will be to study Martian weather, and relay communications between surface vehicles and Earth. Shortly, the craft will pass behind Mars, and its radio signal will disappear from the DSN’s receivers. |
