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NASA's Compton Hits Earth On Sunday
fialar writes: "NASA's Compton Gamma-Ray laboratory is due to plunge into a remote area of the Pacific on Sunday marking an end to the mission. Read the complete story here."
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I don't know if it'd be all that bad a PR thing for the US. The CIA blew up a Chinese embassy not to long ago, albeit it was and "accident". The government was able to spin their way out of that. And that was a tough one. I think having a little 4 ton spacecraft randomly fall from the sky would be much easier to explain.
How true. When I was in Beirut in the early eighties it became common NOT to beleive the documentation we were supplied. Nothing as bad as Panama or China, but it could have been. Over there everyone was a "bad guy". Even the intelligence community. They have seemed to have toned it down quite a bit over the last few years though. It's nothing like it was in the late 70's or mid 80's. That's why the China embassy bombing surprised me. I had thought as a country we greq up a little and were beyond all that.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Skylab was great. I have some pictures from NASA in Ames from the party they had when it finally plunged through the atmosphere and burned up. I seem to remember reports that a 1 foot or so peice actually made it to the ground and landed in New Zealand somewhere. Remember the US/Soviet docking? I forget what it was called but remember seeing it on TV.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Many estimate that the 1/1000 chance is way too large. Some estimate that there is only a 1 in 4 million chance even if the remaining 2 gyros fail: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/sa ve_compton_000515.html I think that NASA, like other government agencies I know, is more concerned with covering its own ass against bad press than doing good work.
I'm 22. I'm a moderate space geek. I know about skylab. Skylab was damn cool. The whole idea of an orbiting space station is awesome. I hope some good shit comes out of the new international station like it did from skylab. That russian/american docking will probably be in the history books for a long time.
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
After an unintentional mid-eighties nuclear escalation: "If this is what it means to be under the United States nuclear umbrella, I think we'd rather go it alone"
.357 of his. They engage in the worst sort of mouthy threat, backed by hot air and vitrolic innuendo. I refer to them as cowboys because they are as likely as Ronnie 'The Cowboy Diplomat' Raygun to shoot off their mouth with threat.
After a test firing of a Minuteman-II rocket, due for installation in nearby countries as per request, went bad due to a misaligned gyro: "We will not stand to have these things near our state. You militants have to know that the days of whomever draws first wins have been over for a lifetime' [exact quote, bad translation]
After a military exercise in the Pacific allegedly 'locked on' to a civilian aircraft flying in restricted airspace: "If they are allowed to continue this brash course of action, not only will we speak out against it we will rally others to our cause [total offensive disarmament]'
The Swiss shoot off their mouths faster than Clint Eastwood can draw that
.sig: Now legally binding!
Ok everyone, here's a 22nd century time capsule for you...
Pebble-sized titanium bolts, aluminum I-beams and heavy nickel batteries
Believe in things of which no person has ever learned
Beirut?? That late?
A few friends and I were sitting around BS'ing about this very subject some weeks back. From what I gleaned, things have gotten progressivly better since Vietnam, when intel was to be considered correct as a last recourse only, through Panama, where the intel was judged to be correct if and only if it made absolute sense, to Desert Storm, where intel was 100% correct and stating different meant you got branded..
The stuff they pull never ceases to surprise me, unfortunatly. I always assume worst case because that's all they have been historically good for, and they hit new lows all the time..
.sig: Now legally binding!
He wasn't completely forgotten. Speaking of scientists working to advance the frontiers of Gamma Ray Research, you forgot to mention another fine pioneer, David Banner.
And, yo, moderators, where ya' gettin' yo $3 crack from?
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
After such a successful mission the only thing to make it better would be to actually profit monetarily from it. So sell it on EBAY!! One used as-is satellite. For research or retaliation. Cost of sale includes shipping (i.e. final resting place of satellite). The right entry angle and you could smack someone's embassy pretty hard. What, our satellite? Act of god man, we didn't mean to blow up your building.
it is kind of scary. i can only hope that the moderator was trying to be equally funny.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Actually 1 in 1000 is terrible odds, what about animals, property damage, and cosmetic wilderness damage? If it lands and destroys part of some farm and kills a few animals is that ok?
There are more things on Earth than just people and some of them are actually very important. A responsible space agency would understand this and release the gamma ray satellite when they are sure it can be landed safely into the ocean. Risking a few ocean fish sure beats a potential hit or near hit to a populated area.
Very good. Nice job. I miss the old days. . .
There once was a slahshdot request
A new haiku rejoicing success
Last night life, so sweeten'd
Many hats would be eaten
2 point postings, I must now confess
Earth escape speed is about 25 mi/sec. This speed, however, will still leave the object in solar orbit at earth's distance. To make the object fall into the sun, you have to accelerate it to the orbital speed of the earth around the sun, about 67 mi/sec. This delta-v requires far more fuel than any spacecraft can possibly carry to low earth orbit.
You got all the facts right; the numbers are off. Earth escape speed is 7 miles per second (perhaps you were thinking Mach 25, orbital speed?), and earth orbital speed is... damn, I used to know this one. BOTE calculations give me 19 mi/sec.
Anyway, a lot of speed. We can't even send probes up to solar escape velocity without gravity assists, and solar escape velocity is actually lower deltaV than an orbit inside the sun.
No, much better to drop used-up LEO satellites into the ocean (since air resistance will bring them down eventually, best to force the matter and keep the reentry risks minimal), and to move used-up HEO satellites into parking orbits where they are less likely to be a debris source.
To answer another poster's question, yes satellites carry rocket fuel on them... although it's almost certainly not going to be the same high-thrust cryogenic fuel that got them up in orbit to begin with. For a satellite, you just need a little thrust for stationkeeping purposes. Since the Earth isn't perfectly round and isn't the only other body in the universe, you can't expect your satellite to follow a nice Kepler orbit exactly without help. And for LEO sats, your orbit will drop over time as air resistance (not much of it, but it's there) takes its toll, unless you have small thrusters to raise the orbit again.
Of course, what I'd like to see done with old satellites is refueling and refurbishing. I'd like to see a tug in orbit with ion drives to reduce its fuel requirements and a metal or water-shielded bay to carry satellites through the Van Allen belt. The primary use of such a beast would be to carry satellites from LEO to GEO (thus putting much heavier sats in geosynchronous orbit than we can with chemical rockets alone, and permitting travel to GEO from reusable launch vehicles), but perhaps even bringing back satellites for on-orbit refueling and replacement of failed parts would be economical.
Uh, the CIA blew up a Chinese Embassy? The freaking U.S. Air Force did it! It was bad intel on the part of the CIA but the U.S. Air Force is the one that dropped the bomb. Sounds like someone has been read too much Tom Clancy.
BTW, I like the oscar, nice site.
I'm pretty sure they have a piece that survived reentry on display somewhere. I think I remembevr seeing it. Maybe in the Air and Space museum in DC. if I remember correctly, it looked sort of like a mutilated bale of hay. That doesn't really make sense, but it's what comes to mind.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
The Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory outlived its mission lifetime by seven years. NASA considers it to be one of the space agency's most successful missions.
All that any satellite has to do is fulfil its mission. If it sticks around another year or two, then that's gravy. All satellites eventually die; the low earth orbiting ones all need to be deorbited so they don't collide with other satellites. Compton outlived its life by _seven_ _years_. The US taxpayer got WELL worth his or her money with this one. ;-)
just to be annoying..... actually the compton gamma ray observatory DOES have a radioactive source on board, it is solar powered like you mentioned so does not contain any RTG's (radioisotope thermoelectric generators) for power. but it does contain two small Cobalt 60 gamma emitters for calibration of the COMPTEL instrument. the amount of radioactive material contained in the sources is so small however, that when dispersed in the atmosphere, it can be considered negligable when compared to natural background radiation.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Umm...one of the main reasons NASA spends lots of money throwing stuff into outer space is to further the pursuit of science. I'd imagine quite a few "nerds" (I dunno, even when happily self afflicted, that word still seems to carry a negative annotation to me. Geek is ok though.) find space exploration, and most anything pertaining to it rather interesting. If nothing else, it has provoked some fairly interesting discussion in the threads. Stop whining.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
A bus stop in Redmond.
(Score -1 Flaming Satelite bait)
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
A big fat battery plunging through the roof of my house, along with aluminum I-beams and titanium bolts. Yippee.
These things aren't THAT accurate you know...
--
Eric is chisled like a Greek Godess
marotti.com
While Gamma Ray research was furthered by NASA's Compton, the greatest Gamma Ray research was done by the pre-eminent scientist of his day in 1960 by Dr. Reed Richards.
Eschewing the titular formality of Dr, preferring instead to be known simply as Reed Richards, he led a manned space probe, along with his wife Sue, her brother Johnny and their friend Ben. This probe was of such a secret nature that history has not recorded it, bestowing the first manned space probe honors upon John Glenn instead.
While the Gamma Ray research during the probe did not go as planned (Reed and the others were are all horribly mutated in various ways), it led to further refinement of Gamma Ray research techniques, finally culminating in NASA's Compton.
I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to the Fantastic Foursome of those intrepid space pioneers, who by necessity of the secret nature of their research, have been passed over by the history books.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
NASA definitely needs a little good PR; that 1 in a 1000 stat didn't go over well with the general public. You can't expect the G.P. to understand that it's only if another gyroscope goes out.
It's your own fault, you must have gotten me started.
You might be thinking Persing 2...not Minuteman II
The Minutemans were never based outside the US.
I suppose it depends on what you consider the "thing" is. I don't think safety was the driving factor in the decision because the Goddard engineers figured out a way to do a controlled re-entry without the use of any gyros. Unfortunately the NASA brass didn't want to hear it. I'm guessing that budget reasons probably had more to do with it.
The US/Soviet docking of 1975 was called the ASTP (Apollo - Soyuz Test Project), and some would argue it to be the beginning of the end of the cold war. Not only that, but it was also the first (and only) spaceflight for Deke Slayton, who was one of the original mercury astronauts, but was grounded for abnormal heart rythms before the Mercury mission that was scheduled to be his. As for the spirit of the nation of the time, it would be nice to get the nation thinking the space program was worth it (maybe they don't realize that a lot of the technology in their everyday lives is a result of the space program).
The funny thing is, I know/think this, and I'm only a Junior in High School.
Think --> Think Different --> Think OSS
I remember staying up real late to watch it fall out of the sky as a kid, about 9 yrs old. It was fascinating to me - Perth (the nearest largish city in the area where it crashed) wasn't really sure if it was going to hit or not, and there was a general superstition in the neighbourhood about the whole thing ...
It ended up crashing near Esperance, and yes - large bits of it made it to the ground, including an Oxygen tank or two. There are people in Esperance who swear that the piles of junk on the shelf contain bits of Skylab, even to this day.
Here in Los Angeles (where I now live), there's a bit of Skylab up in the Griffith Observatory (near the Hollywood sign), as well as a pretty nifty little display on the whole thing. Go check it out some time if you're in the area, it's a free geek-out.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Actually someone is taking odds for it landing on NASA HQ...
The big worry is we will have a coronal mass ejection (like happened thursday) that will arrive at earth saturday night (Like is predicted for tonight) which will cause the earths atmosphere to expand enough to cause it to re-enter early.
Re-enter to early and your in asia
Come in one orbit early and your in the jungles of south america...
So much for reducing risk...
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
look on the AviationNow site here
Any odds on it landing on NASA HQ ?
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
My Chemistry teacher (a big aeronautics fan) mentioned that there exists a photo of a NASA rep handing over A$5 to a Western Australian park ranger (where Skylab fell over) to pay for "littering" in the outback after bits of Skylab landed there.
--- if y cn rd ths y cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmmng!
Compton, satelite
Not the bad L.A. suburb
Don't confuse the two
I wish I was able to have enough money, to be able to have billions of dollars of technology crash into the earth and speeds that are just obsence....so...much..fun.
the fireworks with this one won't be as nearly as impressive as Iridium.
According to the article (for those too lazy to read it), it was still working fine with 2 out of 3 gyroscopes after the first one failed. They decided to crash it to reduce the risk of debree hitting a person from 1 in 1000 (after the second gyroscope failed and it lost control) to 1 in 29 million.
That seems like kind of a waste to me. I mean, 1 in 1000 doesn't seem so bad to me, odds-wise. And that's only after the second one fails. They probably could have gotten years of service out of it without any problem.
I hope the press is kind to them, they sure were rough on NASA back in Dec,-Jan when this first was announced.
Anyone know any more details about the satelite and gamma-ray research? I'm curious.
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
WASHINGTON, D.C., June 2, 2000. Secretary of the Interior called a press conference today to announce the implementation of a new cooperative agreement between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The interior Secretary called the agreement an historic step towards successful implementation of Reinventing Government, Stage II, that has been developed by the Clinton Administration.
Under the terms of the new agreement, packs of wolves, imported from Canada, will be introduced into several NASA centers. In particular, the NASA research and spaceflight centers at Goddard (Greenbelt, MD), Marshal (Huntsville, AL), Johnson (Houston, TX), and Ames (Moffett Field, CA) have been targeted. "Wolves are an endangered species that need special protection to allow their populations to increase," said Babbit. "Private landowners have objected to releasing wolves in National Parks, fearing that they will wander onto private lands and attack livestock. This agreement represents an innovative compromise that will allow the wolves to prosper in areas where the public will have no objection to their presence."
The Administrator of NASA, Daniel Goldin was present at the Department of Interior press conference. When asked for his reaction to the plan, Goldin said, "NASA is undergoing unprecedented downsizing in response to the desire on the part of the Clinton Administration and the U.S. Congress to reduce the size and cost of the Federal Government. This agreement with the Fish and Wildlife Service will introduce ecologically sound management practices that will replace the 'business as usual' approach to personnel issues at NASA. Federal agency work forces are no different than overpopulated herds of deer or elk in our country today. We, too, need to thin the herds," said Goldin.
The Interior Secretary interrupted Mr. Goldin to reassure NASA employees that the vast majority of them would be unaffected by wolf pack predation. "Keep in mind that wolves tend to prey mostly on the weak and slow," Babbit said. "Most NASA employees can move pretty fast and stay out of harm's way. If you keep alert and show no fear, chances are the wolves will leave you alone. Our wildlife experts tell me that 95% of the NASA employees will be unaffected by wolf predation in an average year."
An information brochure, entitled "Adapt or Die," will be distributed to all NASA employees. The brochure explains the ecological basis for this new management policy. It also points out that there are severe penalties for harming endangered wolves, even in self-defense. It says, "Keep in mind that humans are not an endangered species and, therefore, lack protection under the law."
Perhaps a better failure state for various satellites, rather than crashing into the earth, is to crash into the Sun(or even to simply travel off into space?)
The presumption is this: The passage of time creates additional technologies for discerning signal from noise in radio signals. Thus, missions could be designed to have failure states that allow for the presumption that, in case of gyroscopic failure that would otherwise lead to an earth crash recovery model, a "send it out there and hope we can still interpret its signals" mode could be used.
Of course, this would never function for anything in a low earth orbit or even in geosync, due to the requirements for enough fuel to escape our orbit, but there's might be at least a few satellites barely in orbit such that a maximum burn of all reserved fuel in a given direction would allow escaping our orbit entirely.
Thoughts? I'm no rocket scientist, and I fully admit that.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
I kinda wish it'd hit land, cause a it'd make an awsome souvenir.
Skylab was from the REAL MACHO days of NASA. They couldn't do anything wrong.
When Skylab was launched (check out this link) it lost a solar panel. The photo on that link is Skylab clearly missing a wing! What happened was during the launch vibration shook the missing solar panel until it deployed. It was ripped off the Saturn V/Skylab stack by *atmospheric drag* taking a meteorite shield and fouling up the other solar panel. The first people to live on Skylab had to clear the remaining solar panel so it could deploy, and rig a sunshade to bring temperatures in the laboratory down to bearable levels.
And, not to be completely offtopic, today's Astronomy Picture of the Day has a good page about the Compton re-entry.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
not quite as precise as a mars landing, but still... Frightening thought though. (and I don't think they'd let that happen twice)
don't forget yeller. i think he's a busboy or something.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
How is these lyrics insightful? Its disgusting...
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
I had another attempt after getting some coordinates in January this year as well, but failed to find anything.
Bye, CGRO, you've been a great instrument.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
(apologies to Tom Petty)
... free falling
I'm a good tool. I love my gamma
Love burst tests, and imaging too
I make good maps, with EGRET and COMPTEL
And I'm wideband to 30 GeV, too.
It gets lonely at three-twenty miles high
There's a spysat here, we never even talk.
But I'm a bad sat, 'cuz I only got two gyros
I'm a bad sat, ao they're breaking me up
And I'm free
Down at Goddard, out on the Beltway,
Could keep me up 'til my detectors go dark!
But all the hackers are standing in the shadows
While the suits there, are holding all the cards.
So I'm free, I'm free fallin'
I wanna glide down in the Pacific
Don't wanna leave chunks all over the sky
Don't wanna free fall down onto someone
Don't wanna be a NASA black eye
So I'm free, I'm free fallin'
Yes, I'm Compton. I loved my gamma
Read transients, and did imaging too
I'm a bad sat, and you won't even miss me
I'm a bad sat, and it's breaking my heart
So I'm free, I'm free fallin'
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
That comment deorbits on its own (because lighter pieces fall more slowly than heavier pieces! ha!).
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
I'm usually extremely skeptical and almost always never accept conspiracy theories, but does anyone realise that the embassy bombing occured at the same time as some Chinese spies were caught stealing Tomohawk missile secrets and other stuff. Seems like the bombing was quite a clear payback and warning to China IMHO.
I'm no rocket scientist (no pun intended), but there must be some way that the remains of the satellite could be put to some function. Given the costs of sending stuff into space is about $US22000/kg (I think), if you can reuse one tonne of old satellite parts, you've just saved yourself $22 million. Again, I know little about the science of satellites, this is just what I think.
Your both wrong. Acceleration due to gravity is 9.81 meters per second squared, regardless of mass. The only thing that would cause a difference in speed is air resistance.
... to a certain location in Washington state? That would end that anti-trust suit real quick. Maybe someone could perhaps suggest a military target for this thing. Seems like an awful waste letting it hit the ocean.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
As someone who lives in a country in a remote area of the Pacific, I'd just like to express my heartfelt concern about having a Gamma-Ray laboratory falling to Earth nearby.
Despite New Zealand's nuclear-free policies, we already have quite more than our fair share of Radioactive Monsters from the Deep, and we certainly don't need any more politicians, thanks all the same...
Quick, everybody, /. NASA so they can't do the final burn like they need to. With any luck it will hit a city where either Metallica, Madonna, or the RIAA happens to be.
--------
Oscarfish.com: tropical fish with attitude. Way t
Oh well, I guess I better get back to the walker, I'm pushing 30 here.
--
The unsig!
Given the recent crashing troubles, it's good that Nasa is letting the world know up front that this is supposed to happen. Maybe they should put some guys in lab coats around the crash site (yeah, I know, ocean) to wave their hands and shout "It's OK, this is supposed to happen! It's a good crash!"
In the age of instant news, high powered/super-zoom lenses, and live coverage of just about anything that burbs, is someone going to be covering this event? Do any of the major news outlets have 1m resolution look down satelites yet?
___
I remember when NASA use to try to squeze every ounce of life out of it's probes, Just look at the history.
Neptune and Uranus where secondary objectives for voyager II if it survived that long.
Pioneer 10 and 11, first probes to cross the asteroid belt, visit jupiter, and visit saturn. They continued obtaining data from them long after the jupiter and saturn(pioneer 11) flybys. Pioneer 10 expired in the mid 90's (launched 1973) and they are predicting pioneer 11 (launched 1972) to kick the bucket anyday now. It is still returning usefull data, though it has no budget!
Pioneer 6, launched in 1965 is considered NASA's oldest operational space craft, I know it was still running in 1996, I think it is still running...
Pioneer Venus launched in 1978 was designed to last a year, they kept it going until 1992.
The Viking missions, launched in 1976, they kept them going till the landers died in the mid 80's.
The Skylab rescue, instead of writing it off they salvaged the derilict space station.
They salvaged and repaired Solar Max with the shuttle, to bad they where to cheap to launch a reboost mission to keep it going later (under the NEW NASA)
And finally the (Orbiting Astronomy Observatory) OAO-3 copernicus. Launched in 1972, it was kept going until the early 1990's. As the Gyro's failed (one by one) the control software was modified to handle first only 2 working gyro's, then only 1 working gyro.
Which btw. is what happened to GRO, it now has only 2 working gyro's. GRO was designed to be serviced by the space shuttle (just like solar max, and hubble). NASA acknowledges that they can modify the software to safely control/re-enter with 1 or 0 operating gyro's.
This is a waste of tax payer money, and a direct effort by the NEW NASA to distance itself from the successful programs of the OLD NASA.
Did you hear since the VP is in charge of the space program that Al Gore invented outer space ?
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
While I vent some deep links to nasawatch
comments on the crash
likely excuses by NASA
FAQ on why to crash
SpaceflightNow crash status
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
Considering that by the time they get it in to space, it's quite obsolete, I see no problem with this. You have to admit, smashing up an 8088 with a sledgehammer is quite fun.. Not to say that's how I (or NASA) get my jollies ;P