[neo_followup] Mars Perseverance astrometry

[Bill Gray]

Hi folks,

    My third and last request for data on a Mars mission...

    We have nominal ephemerides for the spacecraft from JPL's
Horizons system :

https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?horizons_news

    Observability should resemble that for Tianwen-1 and EMM;
the objects will be in the same general area of the sky,
reasonably easy to observe for Northern Hemispherians.  As
with those two earlier missions,  we'll have to figure out
where the boosters are (and any other bits that fall off)
ourselves.

    As far as I know,  no Mars mission hardware has come back
and been observed.  But except for the bits that stay at Mars,
the rest is usually in an orbit where it could come back and
be observed,  and we probably couldn't tell that it wasn't
a rock;  the speed would resemble that of a natural object.
For example,  if Tianwen-1 should fail for any reason,  it'll
be quite visible from the Southern Hemisphere in July 2023.
So your data matters.

-- Bill