Talking to Mars
05 November 201607:13AMcoursework
What's the internet like on Mars?
(If you like raw data and sources, you can find 'em in the table at the bottom.)
For a while, NASA was actually planning a dedicated communications satellite for Mars, but evidently decided to just roll that in to MRO instead.
Let's not even start on the fact that NASA can download things from Mars faster than most of us can download a movie. And by download, I of course mean legally stream. And by faster, I of course mean downstream bitrate - the latency is still awful, and the process of sending data to Mars is slower than a tortoise running through molasses.
| Spacecraft | Arrival date | Max Downlink | Min Downlink | End of mission | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mars Global Surveyor | 11/09/1997 | 85 | 21 | 2/11/2006 | http://www.astronautix.com/m/marsglobalsurveyor.html |
| 2001 Mars Odyssey | 24/10/2001 | 110 | 28 | ongoing | http://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/DPSummary/odyssey_telecom.pdf |
| Mars Express | 25/12/2003 | 184 | 28 | ongoing | http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/doc.cfm?fobjectid=41765 |
| Mars Reconaissance Orbiter | 10/03/2006 | 6000 | 500 | ongoing | https://web.archive.org/web/20060317102639/http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/mission/sc_telecomm.html |
| Curiosity | 6/08/2012 | 32 | 0.5 | ongoing | http://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission/communicationwithearth/data/ |