Bear with me, being new to all this I have ideas but the questions are to help me understand the theory....I guess.
So spacecraft like Apollo and newer craft all rely upon Telemetry data from earth, confirming the ship's exact position and orbit, everything needed to do things right the first time, correct?
On board systems are synced to that and confirmed in case of Apollo with star readings, correct?
But the linchpin is the earth upload of Telemetry? The other systems are meant only as backup and may not be most accurate?
As for the Mars mission question, if the above were true, how much bandwidth does the Telemetry consume?
I heard that one of the recent probes to pass a kupier belt object took 2 years to send back just the bits of data for the pictures it took? Because at those distances the bandwidth is very small.
I thus wonder if the Telemetry data is considered prohibitively too much for what is feasible bandwidth even at distance of Mars, let alone outer planets?
Is this a major factor in why human spaceflight hasn't progressed past Lunar orbit?
So spacecraft like Apollo and newer craft all rely upon Telemetry data from earth, confirming the ship's exact position and orbit, everything needed to do things right the first time, correct?
On board systems are synced to that and confirmed in case of Apollo with star readings, correct?
But the linchpin is the earth upload of Telemetry? The other systems are meant only as backup and may not be most accurate?
As for the Mars mission question, if the above were true, how much bandwidth does the Telemetry consume?
I heard that one of the recent probes to pass a kupier belt object took 2 years to send back just the bits of data for the pictures it took? Because at those distances the bandwidth is very small.
I thus wonder if the Telemetry data is considered prohibitively too much for what is feasible bandwidth even at distance of Mars, let alone outer planets?
Is this a major factor in why human spaceflight hasn't progressed past Lunar orbit?