Talk:NASA spacecraft enters Mars orbit

There's already an article on this. Delete? -MescalineBanana 20:55, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I checked main page and workspace, I can't find a dupe. If you know of one, please list and perhaps consider adding  to it so it shows up on the workspace. --Brian McNeil / talk 21:09, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

--- How can the probe radio data back to Earth 10 times faster than any previous probe?! All radio transmissions travel at the speed of light! Explain what you mean, please. Does it have 10 times the bandwidth? ~Sr.Wombat @ Wikipedia

Since "radio" is the verb, and "data" is the noun, it's the data that's "verbed" ten times faster. Replace "radio" with "broadcast", if you'd prefer. This conclusion was reached without research, but with a simple interpretation of the sentence structure. Given that you offer two possible solutions then express one of them is impossible, perhaps it's the other. My suggested solution is to replace the verb. Karen 21:19, 13 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I think I fixed this sentance to explain that it is not 10 time faster to send data, but that there is a much bigger pipe that is holding all of the data being transmitted back. This probe is using a high power microwave transmitter that simply can send much larger amounts of raw data back to the Earth.  This is critical because it is also going to be sending back much higher resolution images and just larger amounts of data.  Because the optics are so good and the bandwidth is so high, details on the ground are going to be seen that are going to be better than anything which has been sent to Mars previously.


 * Compare this bandwidth to the original Mariner IV spacecraft, which send the data back at the rate of about 50 baud, or roughly 50 pixels per second. It took over an hour to recieve a single image from the surface of Mars and was very painful to sit and wait for the image to be updated one pixel at a time.  The Viking I lander had slight better bandwidth, but it was still a very slow process of sending back one little bit of the image at a time.  --Robert Horning 05:51, 14 March 2006 (UTC)