Talk:List of Solar System probes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents

[edit] Proposal to rename and extend scope

I propose that this page is renamed "List of space missions" (or something similar) as it includes non-planetary missions (sun, moon, asteroids, comets). Also propose it is extended to include things like Apollo, ISS, MIR, Skylab etc. - basically everything except satellite launches after they became routine. There doesn't seem to be any other comprehensive list of space missions all in one place (unless I missed it?), and it would be good to have one. Any thoughts? Matt 12:55, 17 September 2006 (UTC).

There are some technical difficulties with regard to deciding where to draw the line once we get away from interplanetary probes, and it looks like a bit of a Pandora's box. An exception are the Apollo missions to the moon which can easily be added to the Lunar probes section. After that, we have: manned earth orbiting missions, shuttle missions, geostationary satellites, low earth orbit satellites, objects sent to Earth-Moon Lagrangian points. Some of the difficulties are
  1. How do we choose at which date do we cut off. e.g. should Sputnik be included?
  2. At what height of orbit should we cut off. Presumably geostationary satellites are out, but this would also eliminate all manned missions excepto for a subset of the Apollos.
  3. How do we count manned orbital missions if we were to include them. E.g. there have been over a hundred space shuttle flights; what about the ISS, Mir etc.- are they counted as a single mission? What about the Soyuz launches to supply Mir and the ISS?
Deuar 16:37, 18 September 2006 (UTC)


I think that a common-sense "as-we-go" approach should be adopted, rather than trying to lay down strict rules in advance; I'm quite happy to voice an opinion, for what it's worth, on individual cases. Regarding the points you mention, my own view is that:

  • The Shuttle programme should be mentioned, but the individual launches can be handled by a link to List of space shuttle missions. We don't need to list them all here.
  • The Soyuz programme should be mentioned, with a link to Soyuz programme for the detail of all the launches.
  • "Space stations" (Skylab, Mir, ISS) should definitely be included. There's no need to get too hung up on whether it's counted as a single "mission", we can just have a subsection called "Space Stations" and list them there. I don't think that will confuse anyone. (Or maybe a better article title would be something like "Summary of Activities in Space", rather than "List of Space Missions"?)
  • Sputnik should definitely be individually mentioned, as should any other satellite launches of especial historical or scientific importance, such as Telstar. Later routine satellite launches can be handled with a note, perhaps giving an estimate of the total number of launches and types (e.g. comms, spy, mapping, GPS, scientific research etc.) and links to other articles where the details are listed, if that information is available.
  • The Apollo programme should very definitely be mentioned, as should the Gemini and Mercury programmes (which are just another couple I happened to think of at random!)

Matt 22:39, 18 September 2006 (UTC).

This looks like a list of all non-commercial space flights. It is likely a desirable thing to have, but I'm doubtful whether it should all be here − it's just that the present planetary probe list is already very long! A separate "list of space missions to Earth orbit" would be the better solution in my opinion. (the two such "sister" articles could mention each other at the top). Deuar 20:25, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I'm having a rethink about this too. What I really want is a summary list of all "space activities" in one place - and not broken down by planet so that each flight potentially appears multiple times, as is the case in this article. So probably a separate article would be the answer. It would probably be shorter than this one. For example, a few of the entries would simply be something roughly like this:
Programme/Mission Country/Agency Main objective(s) Type Launch date(s)
Sputnik program Soviet Union Placing satellites in earth orbit Unmanned 1957–60
Apollo program NASA Moon landings Manned 1967–72
Voyager program NASA Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune flybys Unmanned 1977

If I get round to it I may have a go. Thanks for helping me to crystallise my thoughts! Matt 22:00, 19 September 2006 (UTC).

Now that sounds like a really useful list to me too. Have fun! :-) Deuar 15:08, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Actually, digging around further, I see that there are already literally dozens of Wikipedia articles that contain various lists of space activities (some of them overlapping), which I was not aware of. I don't think any useful purpose would be served by adding yet another one! Oh well... Matt 14:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Suggestions for new article title

The title of this article (List of planetary probes) is clearly wrong given its contents. In fact it lists every mission that left Earth orbit, whether to a planet, to the moon, to an asteroid or comet, or for the purposes of solar or general astronomical observation. My best suggestion is List of solar system probes. Any better ideas? Matt 22:31, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

We are all part of the Solar System, so a medical probe investigating human lungs is in fact also a solar system probe.
The Moon is orbiting the Earth, so lunar landers haven't "left Earth orbit".
Often the Moon-Earth system is called a 'double planet', so List of planetary probes is OK.
These probes have to cruise the 'interplanetary space', so why not List of interplanetary probes?
If List of Solar System probes is choosen, Solar System must be with capital 'S', since it is a toponym. --Necessary Evil 23:22, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
I am confident there will be no confusion with probes investigating human lungs. I do actually prefer your suggestion List of interplanetary probes, but, regardless of double-planet technicalities, I do not think many people would expect "(inter)planetary probes" to include lunar missions. In fact, in my view a lunar probe definitely isn't an "(inter)planetary probe". Some of the solar missions listed aren't either. However, List of Solar System probes is ugly, so I don't know... Matt 23:53, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
I have a book: "Anthony Wilson: Solar System Log, 1987, Jane's Publ., ISBN 0-7106-0444-0" describing all lunar, planetary and cometary probes. It even has interstellar probes like the Voyagers, so to me List of Solar System probes isn't ugly. And as you kind of wrote, many people expect that spacecraft leaving the Earth to other celestial bodies are "out in the Solar System". --Necessary Evil 00:24, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
I finally got round to doing this. Matt 01:48, 9 October 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Another Matt (talk • contribs)

[edit] Proposed probes

I see that missions still in concept are not to be listed, but is there a place to list proposals such at the TAU mission? DougHill 17:44, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge proposal

I wondering if it would be a good idea to merge Timeline of Solar System exploration with this article. I know that this is sorted by date within target, and the timeline is just sorted by date, but otherwise the information seems to be entirely duplicated (apart from a handful of very early earth-orbiters). Is it worth maintaining two lists just for the sake of this difference? I'm not entirely sure, so what do others think? Note also the discussion immediately above about renaming this article. Matt 01:06, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the duplication of work is annoying. I do however see three advantages that Timeline of Solar System exploration has, which I'd like to see addressed before any merge:
  1. As you noted, it's sorted by date. I especially rely on being able to see "what are the recent missions" at a glance.
  2. It has the 1st XXXX entries.
  3. It's much shorter (about a third the length measured in pages), which I find makes it easier to use for browsing rather than lookup.
An article on "missions currently active" could somewhat mitigate the effects of my first point, though it would still be only a partial solution. The 1st XXXX issue could be dealt with by expanding List of space exploration milestones, 1957-1969 to include all dates, and perhaps adding a summary of "major milestones" so it's easier to scan quickly.
Do you agree with me that the biggest problem with keeping separate articles is duplication of work? If that's the motivating factor here, maybe we can find some way to base both articles off the same data set. This sounds like a task for a database and query system, but WP doesn't quite work like that. I'm not sure if there's any good way to accomplish something similar on WP, at least not without massive abuse of the templating system.
vasi 11:40, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it's the duplication of work that's annoying, and it seems to be endemic in these spaceflight list articles. I've made a number of enhancements to some of these from time to time, and then just when I've made a change in one place I find another two or three articles that list essentially exactly the same information but "sliced and diced" in a slightly different way. As you say, a database solution would be ideal. Then a large number of these spaceflight list articles could be based on just one set of data. How that could happen in Wikipedia, if at all, I really have no idea though. I believe there is a facility to create sortable tables, but I'm not sure if it's sophisticated enough to cope with what we want to do here. I pretty much agree with all your other points too... Matt 13:25, 5 June 2007 (UTC).

One solution to some of these problems could be to use a sortable table http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Table#Sorting but as far as I know these are still in the early stages of development and are a little hard to read sbandrews (t) 11:03, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Spacecraft Date Destination Country Type
Sputnik 1 1957 Earth USSR Orbiter
Sputnik 2 1958 Earth USSR Orbiter
Mariner 2 1962 Venus USA Flyby
Mariner 4 1964 Mars USA Flyby
Hubble Space Telescope 1990 Earth USA Orbiting Telescope










[edit] Partial success vs. Partial failure

What is the difference between partial success and partial failure (compare Genesis with Sakigake Halley flyby)? I ask because partial success is shaded grey but partial failure is left unshaded. I'd suggest that we don't have partial failures only failures, since anything that didn't fail can be viewed as a partial success. ThreeBlindMice 21:10, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, there shouldn't be any "partial failures". There should only be "success", "partial success" and "failure". "Success" and "partial success" should be shaded, and "failure" shouldn't. I've changed the remaining instances of "partial failure". Matt 22:38, 18 May 2007 (UTC).
Thanks for taking care of this (I was quite willing to make the changes myself but wanted to know if there was some distinction I was missing prior to doing so). ThreeBlindMice 17:44, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of "incomplete list" warning

I've been all the way through this list, and added a number of new entries, and as far as I can see it's pretty much complete. It's hard to say with absolute certainty that nothing is omitted, but I feel confident enough about it that it doesn't need the warning. However, if anyone still has concerns please put it back. I decided not to add some really quite speculative proposals still at concept stage, and put a note to that effect at the start of the list. Matt 02:35, 20 May 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:ExoMars rover0885.jpg

Image:ExoMars rover0885.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in Wikipedia articles constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 06:33, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Smart28261.jpg

Image:Smart28261.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 05:35, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Image deletion

Image:VSE 2013.jpg is listed on proposed deletions. John Vandenberg 13:14, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cancelled probes

This list contained a scattering of "cancelled" missions. In fact, a large number of missions are proposed all the time, some quite notable (e.g. the Planetary Grand Tour); only a minority of these proposed missions ever make it to the launch pad. No criteria are given for determining which of the very large number of proposed missions are to be included on this list. As many of the missions marked as "cancelled" are recent, I surmise that they were placed on the list as "future missions" and then marked "cancelled" when the mission failed to materialize, instead of being removed from the list. In light of WP:NOT#CRYSTAL, it's doubtful that "future missions" should be included, at least before it is certain that they will be launched. I have, however, limited myself to removing the "cancelled" missions from the list, as they serve no purpose. RandomCritic 15:54, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

  • I agree that the cancelled missions should go. Future missions should be included once it is reasonably certain that they will be launched. Certainty can never be 100%. We do not need to get too hung up on a precise definition of "reasonably certain": I'm sure we can make sensible decisions. Matt 01:41, 8 October 2007 (UTC). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.133.214.228 (talk)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Mars Express X orbit 2a-new22.jpg

Image:Mars Express X orbit 2a-new22.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot 08:28, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dates

The date column in this list has always annoyed me. In some cases it's kind of natural to assume it's the launch date, and I think one or two might have been incorrectly changed to launch date. Then there are launch failures which are supposedly meant to list the launch date but sometimes seem to show the planned rendezvous date (which never happened), and various other anomalies. I think it would be much less confusing to have two date columns: launch date, and then the date of rendezvous (or however we want to term it), which is currently the date that is (usually) listed at the moment. That could be just left blank if the thing blew up. The problem is that the table will get wider, and we might have problems making it fit well on a standard monitor. Perhaps we could get rid of the pictures, which I'm guessing are one reason why this page is so painfully slow to load. Anyway, the pictures are almost always on the main article page, which is just one click away, and they're too small to see here so you need to click on something anyway... Or, do we have to take up so much space spelling out the dates in full? Can we just write them in the format like "10-Dec-03"? Thoughts? Matt 02:56, 11 December 2007 (UTC).

Hi, the french page has no picture, loading is better: [1] Groslard (talk) 06:07, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Addition

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a "current status" listed for each of the probes (e.g. crashed, lost, heliocentric orbit)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.145.179.186 (talk) 07:30, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

There is a separate article that aims to do this: List of probes by operational status. Having multiple list articles "slicing and dicing" exactly the same data in different ways is far from ideal -- what we really need is one big table with lots of fields and then some kind of SQL-type syntax to retrieve the required data and sort and format it appropriately, but in Wikipedia there doesn't seem to be any way to do this. Matt 03:10, 19 December 2007 (UTC). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.134.53.193 (talk)

[edit] Cancelled missions (again)

I notice that some cancelled missions have crept back in. I don't feel fanatically strongly about this, but last time we had this discussion (above), the two people who expressed an opinion thought they shouldn't be included. Perhaps it's worth reopening that debate. If we do decide that they are to remain, then I think we should at least try to come up with some criteria for inclusion. I mean, how far back are we going to go? There must be hundreds of cancelled missions if we go right back to the 1960s. Are we only including notable cancelled missions? Notable recent cancelled missions? Missions that got quite a long way before being cancelled? Something else? Matt 23:46, 29 February 2008 (UTC).

  • Since there have been no comments in a long time, and, in particular, no suggestions about how to define inclusion criteria, I have deleted the cancelled probes once again. Matt 22:37, 13 May 2008 (UTC). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.134.53.167 (talk)

[edit] Close to a featured list

Great work here! Ought to become a featured list with a little more work on the introduction and standardized referencing. DurovaCharge! 07:08, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image copyright problem with Image:Beagle2ontheground.jpg

The image Image:Beagle2ontheground.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check

  • That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
  • That this article is linked to from the image description page.

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --09:17, 15 May 2008 (UTC)