CNN/AP: NASA launches Mars orbiter

[DeepModem Mom]

NASA launches Mars orbiter
Friday, August 12, 2005; Posted: 8:43 a.m. EDT


CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- A spacecraft blasted off Friday into a golden early morning sky, beginning a mission to Mars to gather more data on the Red Planet than all combined previous missions.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter lifted off on an Atlas V rocket on a seven-month journey to Mars. The booster rocket shut down and dropped off into the Atlantic Ocean minutes into the launch. Seconds later, the second-stage rocket engine ignited....

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During its first two years, the orbiter will help build on NASA's knowledge of the history of ice on the planet. The planet is cold and dry with large caps of frozen water at its poles. But scientists think it was a wetter and possibly warmer place eons ago -- conditions that might have been conducive to life. Scientists are also trying to determine if it could support future human outposts.

Equipped with the largest telescopic camera ever sent to another planet, the orbiter also will collect data that will help NASA plan where to land two robotic explorers later this decade. The Phoenix Mars Scout, in search of organic chemicals, will be launched in 2007, and the Mars Science Laboratory will follow two years later.

During the second phase of its mission, the orbiter will serve as a communications messenger between the robotic explorers on Mars and Earth. The reconnaissance orbiter has a powerful antenna that can transmit 10 times more data per minute than the current trio of satellites positioned around the planet -- NASA's Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey and the European Space Agency's Mars Express....


http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/08/12/mars.orbiter.ap/index.html

[SpiralHawk]

1. Ah, NASA, Mercury is still Retrograde. D'Oh

I felt some one of us Mystic Whackos should let you know, again, since you all seem to ignore this Basic Cosmic Reality.

Get a grip.

[oscar111]

2. We cant afford mars probes: 100,000 die in our streets/year

dying in our streets, yet we shunt money over to things like this?

you all see the homeless daily downtown. No space shots till we clean up this death in our streets.

they die at three times the normal rate from heat, cold, rat bites and hunger.

As they say, WWJD?

what would jesus do ?

[Waya]

3. Aww, now.....

...I think it would be money well spent if that thing would take Glorious George onboard and haul him out to Space. Wayyyyyyyy out..........}(

[Pab Sungenis]

5. Isn't it obvious what we're planning to do?

Scientists are also trying to determine if it could support future human outposts.

...we're gonna send the homeless to Mars!

[Javaman]

4. I've figured out why we are going to mars!!

They must have found oil there! Why else would moron* be hell bent on going there?

[VegasWolf]

6. Probe's name, "Objective Inspection of Liquids" or "OIL" for short.