Lost Soviet Mars Lander Found?

[muriel_volestrangler]

Nearly 42 years after it landed and mysteriously died on the Red Planet, a Russian spacecraft’s final resting place may have been found thanks to the keen-eyes of an online Russian community of Mars fans, according to a NASA statement this week..

Pouring over hi-resolution images of the landing region snapped by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) a few years back, citizen scientists spotted what looked suspiciously like hardware from the old Soviet Mars 3 lander. Based on the evidence found through this crowdsourcing initiative, a follow-up image was requested and sure enough intriguing details are visible in the new scene
...
Twin probes, Mars 2 and Mars 3 were both launched in 1971 in the hopes of making a soft landing and sending back first images from the planet’s surface. While Mars 2 crashed on November 27, 1971 , its twin, Mars 3, appeared to make a successful touchdown a week later.

While it did become the first human spacecraft to survive a Martian landing, after less than 20 seconds of transmitting a signal to Earth it fell silent, never to be heard from again.

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/04/11/lost-soviet-mars-lander-found/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_tw20130413ngnw-marssoviet&utm_campaign=Content

[TexasTowelie]

1. Marvin says:

[Warpy]

3. I can't look at pictures of Mars without

expecting a prairie dog to pop up out of its hole.

Mars looks remarkably like a lot of New Mexico.

[arcane1]

2. Neat! Did Russia have some idea of where it landed at the time?

[dimbear]

4. Pouring over high resolution images...........

Those Russians. Anything is an excuse to drink. And with vodka sharpened eyes, they found it.

[Cronus Protagonist]

8. The article contains a common error

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/poring

pore 1 (pôr, pr)
intr.v. pored, por·ing, pores
1. To read or study carefully and attentively: pored over the classified ads in search of a new job.
2. To gaze intently; stare.
3. To meditate deeply; ponder: pored on the matter.
[Middle English pouren.]

[Victor_c3]

5. That is fun

I love reading about Mars. The planet and the missions that have been launched to it truly fascinate me.

The Russians spent all of that work and resources to get two probes to Mars only to get one to crash land and the other to survive long enough to transmit data for 20 seconds! Crazy!

The Russian/Soviet missions to Venus are almost just as fruitless as those. I believe that on one occasion they neglected to remove a lens cap off of a camera before launching the probe into space.

As much as I'd love to go into space one day, I wouldn't do it on a Russian space craft - even if it was free.

[LongTomH]

6. Venus missions fruitless?

Take a look at these pictures from the surface of Venus, taken by the Venera 13 probe:




The Russians landed a series of Venera and Vega spacecraft on the surface, some successful, some not. The only pictures we have of the surface of Venus are from Russian probes. Here are the locations of the probes:

[Posteritatis]

7. Nobody has a terribly good track record for Mars

The US has gotten better in recent years, but there was something like a 50-60% fail rate for Mars missions for awhile.

That said, I have no idea where you're getting the idea that the Soviets didn't have a good track record with Venus. They sent missions to Venus in every launch window from 1962 through the mid-eighties and successfully, put a whole lot of hardware into orbit, and had something like ten controlled landings. They got the hang of the place as well as anyone could.

[Warren DeMontague]

9. Given that you're dealing with 800+ degrees of surface temp and incredible pressure

the fact that they had pictures sent back at all is incredible.

Probably the only way we're going to do any sort of exploration of Venus for the near term is to use some sort of atmospheric craft to explore. Getting a machine down to the surface that can survive for very long seems a pretty tall engineering order.

[Vinnie From Indy]

10. The sulphuric acid haze would cause problems as well!

We would have more pictures of Venus if the Russians would have figured out how to deal with lens caps for their cameras. Several of the Venera missions had lens caps that would not release and on one mission a popped off lens cap completely blocked one of the sensor arms from touching the surface of the planet.