Avi Blizovsky
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The European Space Agency hopes to prevent its first interstellar spacecraft from crashing on Mars. Its engineers are trying to fix bugs on the spacecraft's computer before it reaches its destination next month.
The Nozomi spacecraft that is supposed to orbit Mars and study its upper atmosphere was launched in 1998, but it is full of problems, which continue to appear despite repeated attempts to fix them.
Hajima Hayakawa, the project manager at the Japan Aeronautics and Space Administration, said that the malfunctions discovered during the flight caused the spacecraft to change its angle and come too close to the planet's surface before entering orbit.
Naturally there is a margin of error in the calculations of the expected route. In the worst case, it could crash on Mars." said. According to him, the risk of a crash is now XNUMX percent, but the agency wants to eliminate it completely.
To ensure this, JAXA engineers will activate the Nozomi engines on December 9. This operation will further refine the orbit of the 541-kilogram flying dragon-shaped spacecraft.
Before that ignition, the scientists also want to repair the spacecraft's broken electrical circuits, which monitor the instruments on board the spacecraft and transmit the data.
Nozomi, Tikva in Japanese, has made its last approach flight to Earth and is expected to reach Mars on December 14. It is planned to circle the planet at an altitude of 894 kilometers, collect samples and measure the composition of the atmosphere.
For over two years, she will try to assess whether the Red Planet has a magnetic field by studying the magnetic fields in the ionosphere, a part of the atmosphere where free electrons or ions exist. It will also study the evolving interactions between the solar wind and the atmosphere and take a closer look at the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos.
Two spacecraft are currently orbiting Mars - both from NASA - Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey, which take pictures of the surface and transmit the images to Earth. Between December and January, the Japanese spacecraft Nozomi, and the European spacecraft Mars Express (carrying the British Beagle 2 lander inside), as well as two American spacecraft carrying all-terrain vehicles that will land on Mars, will reach Mars.
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