Does it take six months because of the velocity reduction, or is it that it will take that many small maneuvers to precisely position the craft in a specific, stable orbit? Either way it's amazing we can do things like this in such a remote location where the signals take ten minutes to get back and forth.
Here's a question though: if radio waves -like all electro-magnetic waves- are supposed to move at the speed of light, shouldn't it take less than 10 minutes for a signal to travel to/from Mars, since it takes only 8 for light from the sun to reach us?
[DOH, just realized the answer.... Mars can still be further away than the sun depending on the position of its and our orbit, relative to the sun
E ........ Sun ........ M
rather than
E ... M ..... Sun
right?]
...into the light of a dark black night.
Last edited by Moogs : 2006-03-11 at 09:25.
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