Mission controllers determined that was too nice a risk for the $671 million ballistic capsule, whose name stands for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN. So, on Tuesday, they unemployed its rocket enough to extend its speed by zero.4 meters per second. Controllers say that tiny correction can yield a secure two.5 minutes between wizard and Phobos on the sixth.
Maneuvers like this may probably become additional common as traffic to the Red Planet will increase. They’re already commonplace in Earth orbit, says area policy skilled Brian Weeden. “Most objects on a collision course in area move too quick for the human eye to visualize and .... the collision can happen abundant quicker than any human might probably react to,” he told Congress in 2014.
Instead, once orbital models predict an in depth pass, “a warning is provided to the satellite operator or operators concerned along side the likelihood of collision,” he explained. “It is presently up to every operator to work out their own tolerance for risk and use that as a basis for crucial whether or not or to not maneuver the satellite to alter its flight and avoid the shut approach.”
