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A comment on SpaceX craft overshot Mars’ orbit and is headed to asteroid belt. Parent comment

Re:SpaceX craft overshot Mars’ orbit and is headed to astero... by extrapickles on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @10:42AM (#16325141)
They never were going to send it to mars. The plan was to send it out to a orbit that could reach mars if they pointed it correctly.

Now that they know its final orbit they can compute if it will hit anything for thousands/millions of years and slightly adjust it if it does.

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Re:SpaceX craft overshot Mars’ orbit and is headed to astero... by gbrown on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @10:49AM (#16325208)
There's no capability to adjust the trajectory at this point.
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Re:SpaceX craft overshot Mars’ orbit and is headed to astero... by LyndsySimon on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @11:28AM (#16325542)
They've sent one vehicle, I suppose they could send up a tow truck to repossess it...
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Re:SpaceX craft overshot Mars’ orbit and is headed to astero... by Theodores on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @02:35PM (#16327332)
There is also the fire extinguisher in the passenger foot-well, spaceman can just use that to correct his course and get to Mars, maybe to wait for the tow truck there...
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Re:SpaceX craft overshot Mars’ orbit and is headed to astero... by extrapickles on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @01:24PM (#16326731)
After the burn was complete they can use the cold gas thrusters to slightly change the orbit (a few mm/s now adds up over hundreds of years)
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Re:SpaceX craft overshot Mars’ orbit and is headed to astero... by rocqua on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @02:25PM (#16327244)
I heard the batteries were only good for 12 hours. You'd need some sort of power to fire gold gas thrusters.
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Re:SpaceX craft overshot Mars’ orbit and is headed to astero... by extrapickles on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @03:25PM (#16327676)
The final burn was about 6hrs in, so plenty of time then to do any terminal maneuvers (simulating thousands of years shouldn’t take more than an hour)
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Re:SpaceX craft overshot Mars’ orbit and is headed to astero... by nightski on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @10:54AM (#16325255)
I think he means adjust their calculated trajectory once the collision occurs.
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