(February 18, 2021 at 5:05 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:(February 18, 2021 at 4:05 pm)Brian37 Wrote: WOW! That is f-ing fast. I was just watching the news and they were saying Mars has a 40 minute longer day than earth. I find it amazing that they have to work out all that math to time everything down to the second to land that thing. They were reporting too, that the mission will have it land in an ancient riverbed in an attempt to try to find signs of prior life.
Landing a machine on Mars safely has been compared - not unreasonably - to shooting a bird in flight when you can't see the bird and all you have to go on are reports about where it was the last time someone looked at it.
Boru
It is amazing that the math, like even GPS on earth keeps track of an object, but his type of thing is far more complex because of timing and distance.
If you ever heard of "back timing" in radio stations playing LP, it is the math of figuring out when to start the next song before the song playing ends. This is a billion times more planning and timing ahead. Absolutely amazing what goes into figuring these things out.
