Talk:Mars Polar Lander

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Comments[edit]

Since the most newsworthy piece of the mission was its loss, the crash should be mentioned, at least in passing, in the opening paragraph. 76.123.145.220 (talk) 00:00, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why so darned much, unending detail about what was hoped to happen on a busted mission? Can't that be whittled down a lot? Gene Nygaard 23:24, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. :) There are people who would actually be interested in what the mission's purpose was.--BrendanRyan 20:43, 6 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It still needs to be encyclopedic. Too much meaningless, unending detail about something that never happened makes it hard to see the forest for the trees. Gene Nygaard 21:56, 8 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Category/list please[edit]

Would it be possible to have a category of related articles for this thread that list all lost spacecraft or satellites and the reason they were lost? I would be interested in seeing how many space vehicles were lost (in space) since the beginning of the space race, what the causes were and what were the costs.. -- Dave Skiff

"lost" or not resumed[edit]

Communication with the lander was lost prior to atmospheric entry. This is a misleading statement. The comms between Earth and MPL was cut after it oriented itself for reentry and this was obviously by design, so no comms was "lost". The correct statement would be that MPL failed to establish communications after it landed. --Borek Lupoměský, 6 February 2007

Why is Sensory, Inc. and Speech Recognition mentioned?[edit]

The section discussing the microphone includes the text, "The microphone used speech recognition from technology Sensory, Inc." I am at a loss why this is here, as there is no need for speech recognition on this microphone setup. Is this a link plant by Sensory, Inc. to get some PR? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Timmholt (talk • contribs) 20:31, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Plagarised[edit]

Some of the text, if not more, was copied from : http://aerospacescholars.jsc.nasa.gov/HAS/cirr/em/8/8.cfm Popher 16:35, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

US Gov't material is in the public domain, IIRC. -- 193.24.32.37 (talk) 10:35, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't make OK to copy verbatim. Or do you not understand the difference? TREKphiler 08:35, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's absolutely fine as long as it's quoted appropriately69.120.19.57 (talk) 23:48, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Huh? Are you saying it's not OK to copy something that's in the public domain? leevclarke (talk) 05:46, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

martian day[edit]

martian day is 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35.244 seconds long —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.163.13.203 (talk) 06:18, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If it's relevant to the article then add it in! leevclarke (talk) 05:46, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reason for crash?[edit]

Numerous but perhaps non-authoritative sources claim the crash was caused by incorrrect units of measurement (imperialos rather than the NASA-specified metric) used in the software. Is there any truth to this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.175.45.156 (talk) 12:06, 9 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I expect you are thinking of the Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure - similarly named spacecraft - but it was designed as an orbiter and they never intended it to land. It crashed because one piece of software was programmed to create figures for the thrust in pound seconds (imperial units, or "US customary units"), but another piece of software then used those figures as a thrust in newtons seconds (SI unit). Robert Walker (talk) 19:12, 13 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Has wreckage been found[edit]

Beagle 2 was found (partially deployed) - MPL is larger - What effort was put into imaging the presumed crash site, and what was seen ? - Rod57 (talk) 09:28, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]