Talk:List of artificial objects on extraterrestrial surfaces

Include vapourised objects or not=

Perhaps Jupiter should not be included in the list since it has no solid surface to speak of and the spacecraft most likely vapourized. If it is to be included then shouldn't other spacecrafts that have burned up in extra-terrestrial atmospheres also be included in total mass calculations? - Checkguy 18:34, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

It's an interesting one and I have no definite opinion either way. I suppose even if the probe melted or vaporised it is still a man-made object that has become part of an extra-terrestrial body? Out of interest which other spacecraft have there been that have burned up in an extra-terrestrial atmosphere - are they not already in this list (or child pages) somewhere? - CharlesC 23:42, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, one example that comes to mind that is not listed is the Magellan probe. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any others. Maybe a stricter criteria should be used for this article that only lists man-man objects that are, at present, on a solid extraterrestrial surface. This would exclude any of the gas giant planets from this list since they most likely don't have any solid surface or the heat/pressure at the surface of the solid core would obliterate almost anything.

I think the list should either explicitly state whether an object/mass rests on the surface of the planet/moon or whether it was vaporized upon atmospheric entry and its mass is now scattered across the planet/moon as a whole. So, three columns the list: mass on surface, mass vaporized, total mass. The mass vaporized column shouldn’t contain (unless you really want to make the effort to figure out these values) the mass of heat shields or anything like that.

Alternatively, footnotes could be used for each planet/moon that indicate whether vaporized probes were included in the mass calculation and what those masses/probes were. - Checkguy 23:04, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok perhaps what we could do is to keep the main table fairly strict in its criteria - i.e. non-vapourised spacecraft on solid surfaces. Then there could be a secondary table underneath just for interest listing other vapourised craft on various solid or gaseous planets - CharlesC 11:13, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

See also #Deep Impact projectile section below —Preceding unsigned comment added by CharlesC (talk • contribs) 12:27, August 26, 2007 (UTC)

Merging

This article was created as it served as a good parent page to three existing pages (List of artificial objects on Venus, Moon and Mars) and as a place to list other man-made objects that we had landed on other bodies.

The three existing articles on the Moon, Mars and Venus were pretty extensive and I didn't want to repeat all of that as it seems to be on Landings on other planets. - CharlesC 19:35, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Very true which means do we even need Landings on other planets page at all. Anything extra should be able to be merged to this page and the three sub pages. i 7 s 21:13, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Landings on other planets should definately be merged and redirected. Eluchil404 12:04, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Merge notice has been there ages. Although comments here seem pro keeping this article, there is a comment on the discussion page for landings on other planets saying that one ought to be kept too. So seems no compelling reason or rush to merge them, so have removed notices from both pages.
- CharlesC 19:27, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Source

"NASA currently has plans to steer the main spacecraft into Saturn's atmosphere after its mission ends to prevent the contamination of Titan's surface by any terrestrial microbes."

Any source for that statement? --83.144.95.66 18:52, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

As you can see in http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/faq/huygens.cfm#q2 there is no significant risk of contamination of Titan (the environment is very hostile to earth-based life forms). But it still may be true that they plan on steering the craft into Saturn, like they did Gallileo, so I'm don't know that the line should be deleted. Fordsfords 19:31, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't make sense. If there are microbes on Cassini that originated on Earth, wouldn't they also have contaminated Huygens? If so, then Huygens took them down to Titan. Or do they think Cassini picked up new microbes while flying in the area of Saturn - genus Saturnius?! Wouldn't Cassini and Huygens have been sterilized before leaving Earth? I'd be more inclined to think NASA wants to plunge it into Saturn for a nice neat ending rather than having Cassini power down and not know when/how/where it meets its ultimate fate. Me, I'd say to send it for a ride along the rings, getting closer and closer shots of them until debris shreds the spaceship. GBC (talk) 05:59, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Deep Impact projectile

I just added a note about the Deep Impact projectile, but now I'm wondering because I'm not actually sure what happened to the projectile after impact. Is it still there, embedded in the comet? Or did it vapourise on impact? Or was it deflected off into space again? I guess it it isn't stil there then it doesn't qualify? Anyone got any info about this? Matt 23:02, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

The relative impact velocity was 37,000 km/h so I'm guessing in all likelihood that it was vaporized. However, there is still some ambiguity in the article as to whether it should contain the total masses of ALL objects that are now part of extraterrestrial worlds, vaporized or not, or only the masses of objects that are still more or less intact. We should really come up with a consensus. Checkguy 10:17, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Wow, that is fast. Including only "more-or-less intact" objects could create problems in trying to judge between different degrees of destruction. For example, according to this even Ranger 4 (included at List of artificial objects on the Moon) impacted at 9,617 km/h. Whether that's fast enough to vapourise much of the probe I don't know, but it must have left it pretty unrecognisable. Matt 02:23, 23 May 2007 (UTC).

If it has been vapourised I suppose it can't really be described as an object any more and shouldn't be in the main list, however I think these event are still worth noting, so (as I mentioned in the top section on this talk page) perhaps we should go for a secondary list noting vapourised objects and those sent into the gaseous planets. If this is significant, perhaps another column is needed on the other related pages such as List of artificial objects on Mars to show whether mostly intact or not. -CharlesC 12:22, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

List of artificial objects in solar orbit

I would like to see this added and............ Infocat13 03:59, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

list of artificial objects in solar system escape orbits

objects such as the pioneer and voyagers and there solid upper stages Infocat13 03:59, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Itokawa

Does anyone have a source on the mass of the target marker that was left on Itokawa? I've reverted the edit from 591kg back to 0.591 kg because the former is definitely not correct and the latter also seems to be too much mass for such a thing, but seems more reasonable Checkguy (talk) 01:28, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Some time ago I spent a while looking for that info, but couldn't seem to find out much about it unfortunately. --CharlesC (talk) 11:25, 5 December 2008 (UTC)