AST 111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Robotic Spacecraft, Tunxis Community College, Ammonium Sulfide

• School: Tunxis Community College
• Department: Astronomy
• Course: AST 111
• Professor: Bourne

Document Summary

Friction slows the spacecraft as it enters mars" atmosphere, followed by a parachute slowing it down. Rockets slow the spacecraft to a halt, a tether lowers the rover to the surface. Following a safe landing, the tether releases and rockets head off to craft a safe distance away. Flyby missions fly by planets just once, but offer less time to gather data. Orbiters orbit around other worlds, offering more time to gather data but without any detailed information about the surface. Probes/landers land on the surface and explore surface in detail. Sample return missions land on the surface, gather samples, blast off and return to earth (apollo to moon, hyabusa to asteroid, etc) Jupiter and saturn are mostly h and he. Uranus and neptune are mostly h-compounds (water, methane, ammonia), with some h, he and rock. Uranus and neptune are denser than saturn because they have less h/he proportionately.