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Mars Base

Soviet Lander Spotted by Mars Orbiter - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...emains-spotted-by-mars-orbiter

scibyte90 MarsSovietLander MRO

shared by Mars Base on 12 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • On May 28, 1971, the Soviet Union launched the Mars 3 mission which
  • consisted of an orbiter and lander destined for the Red Planet. Just over six months later on December 2, 1971, Mars 3 arrived at Mars
  • The Mars 3 descent module separated from the orbiter and several hours later entered the Martian atmosphere, descending to the surface via a series of parachutes and retrorockets
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • Once safely on the surface, the Mars 3 lander opened its four petal-shaped covers to release the 4.5-kg PROP-M rover contained inside… and after 20 seconds of transmission, fell silent
  • Due to unknown causes, the Mars 3 lander was never heard from or seen again
  • The set of images
  • shows what might be hardware from the 1971 Soviet Mars 3 lander, seen in a pair of images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
  • Russian citizen enthusiasts found four features in a five-year-old image from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that resemble four pieces of hardware from the Mars 3 mission: the parachute, heat shield, terminal retrorocket and lander. A follow-up image by the orbiter from last month shows the same features
  • the largest Russian Internet community about Curiosity.
  • subscribers did the preliminary search for Mars 3 via crowdsourcing
  • modeled what Mars 3 hardware pieces should look like in a HiRISE image, and the group carefully searched the many small features in this large image, finding what appear to be viable candidates
  • Each candidate has a size and shape consistent with the expected hardware, and they are arranged on the surface as expected from the entry, descent and landing sequence
  • The predicted Mars 3 landing site was at latitude 45 degrees south, longitude 202 degrees east, in Ptolemaeus Crater
  • HiRISE acquired a large image at this location in November 2007, and promising candidates for the hardware from Mars 3 were found on Dec. 31, 2012
  • The candidate parachute is the most distinctive feature
  • an especially bright spot for this region, about 8.2 yards (7.5 meters) in diameter
  • The parachute would have a diameter of 12 yards (11 meters) if fully spread out over the surface
  • this set of features and their layout on the ground provide a remarkable match to what is expected from the Mars 3 landing, but alternative explanations for the features cannot be ruled out
Mars Base

Mars orbiter images may show 1971 Soviet lander - 0 views

phys.org/...iter-images-soviet-lander.html

scibyte90 MarsSovietLander MRO

shared by Mars Base on 12 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Russian citizen
  • found four features in a five-year-old image from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that resemble four pieces of hardware from the Soviet Mars 3 mission: the parachute, heat shield, terminal retrorocket and lander
  • follow-up image by the orbiter from last month shows the same features
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • the first spacecraft to survive a Mars landing long enough to transmit anything
  • Further analysis of the data and future images to better understand the three-dimensional shapes may help to confirm this interpretation
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