Venus Express

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Venus Express

• European Space Agency (ESA) mission
• Launched November 9, 2005
• Link on Web
• Arrives April, 2006
• Assignment

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due in a week

• Explore the Venus Express web site found linked
  under the Course Links section of WebCT
• Write a 1 to 2-page, typed discussion of the
  objectives of this mission, including
• how it relates to the Magellan mission,
  especially with respect to trying to answer
  questions left unanswered by Magellan.

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Mars Global Surveyor

• Imaging Mars from an orbit around it
• Recent image of delta-like fans

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Other probes

• Mars Exploration Rover Spirit and Opportunity
  landed in January, 2004
• Still exploring!
• Found a lot of evidence for water as well as
  interesting geology
• (no life seen!)

Mars Odyssey continues to map Mars in infrared
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Asaph Hall

• Discovered two moons in 1877 favorable
  opposition using the 26-inch refractor at the
  USNO, in Washington, DC

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150 years before the were predicted in
Gullivers Travels

• They have likewise discovered two lesser Stars,
  or Satellites, which revolve about Mars whereof
  the innermost is distant from the Center of the
  primary Planet exactly three of his Diameters,
  and the outermost five the former revolves in
  the space of ten Hours, and the latter in
  Twenty-one and an Half so that the Squares of
  their periodical Times, are very near in the same
  Proportion with the Cubes of their Distance from
  the Center of Mars which evidently shows them to
  be governed by the same Law of Gravitation, that
  influences the other heavenly Bodies.

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Phobos

• Phobos is nearer and larger, P 739! rise
  to set in 5h!
• Not spherical why not?

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Deimos

• Almost Marsynchronous -- appears to take 3 days
  horizon to horizon.