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NEAR Touches Down on Eros
Every once in a while NASA does something
amazing.
Today they took a probe that was just supposed to orbit
a rock the size of Manhattan,
guided it
down to the surface,
reoriented the dish, and sent back a hello from ground zero. The
NEAR Shoemaker mission site
and its
mirror
are a little busy at the moment, but
CNN's coverage
is good, with simulated video, and actual photos from two hundred million miles up. Some engineers, and the operators at
Johns Hopkins,
must be awfully proud right about now.
Moon: Soviet probes were the first to hit the moon in the late fifties or early sixties. The first probe to hit the moon was simply to prove that the Soviets could hit the Moon. The British tracked this probe from Jodrell Bank and confirmed the hit.
Mars: IIRC, The Russians were the first to land on Mars and send back an image, although the probe didn't work for long enough to send back a full picture. The American Viking probe touched down in 1976, sent back good images and conducted experiments to find life on Mars.
Venus: The Russians landed a series of Venera probes on Venus in the 1970's. Magellan entered the atmosphere of Venus at the conclusion of its mission.
Jupiter: The Galileo spacecraft sent a probe into the atmosphere of Jupiter in 1995. The Galileo spacecraft itself is scheduled to enter the atmosphere of Jupiter at the conclusion of its mission, so as to avoid any chance of impacting with Europa and contaminating this potentially life-bearing world with microbes from Earth.
Eros: NEAR-Shoemaker landed on Eros in February, 2001.
Mercury: The only probe to have visited Mercury was a Mariner Venus-Mercury flyby in 1973. No spacecraft are known to have landed on Mercury.
The next celestial body to have a spacecraft land on it will be Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, when the Huygens probe from the Cassini spacecraft arrives in 2004.
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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
. . . for signs of it blacking out. You never know when an insect-like race will suddenly decide to invade the solar system. What's the next step, building an orbiting schoolhouse for training soldiers?
For those of you arguing about microgravity: A tidbit from the video (I'm listening to /watching it, as I type this)
Gravity on Eros appears to be 1/1000th of earth Gravity. You might as well have some real stats.
--
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
For a craft that wasn't intended to land, or even survive for a prolonged period of time, this is incredible. It sort of makes you wonder about current NASA budget woes, though. If NASA is forced to switch to a "faster, lighter, cheaper" program, then opportunities like this will become more and more scarce. If the craft were only designed to handle the strict specs of the mission then it would be impossible for impromptu experimentation to take place. The cheap probes and landers would not be as likely to cope with a new situation should it appear. What if a once in a life time event were to occur? With cheaper probes, would it be lost to the scientific community?
Pax Digitalia
But if you think this was great, just wait till you see what other missions JHUAPL has in store.
A number of these are excellent examples of the great, focussed science experiments that can be done under the faster-better-cheaper paradigm, and they're even competing for slots in the slightly more expensive Mid-Explorer program.
*It should be noted in fairness that NEAR itself had a glitch; in December 1998 they failed to make their planned orbit insertion, and had to circle the sun 14 months before another approach could be made. (At that time I'm sure many
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
they had to be smoking something to come up with:
"Hey man, let's land this thing!"
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I wonder if people with censorware will be able to see them.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
10. Approach one stuck in the event horizon.
9. "Rocket Jump" from a near by Quake3 map.
8. Use the force to move the Asteroid under your feet.
7. Surf to "http://www.howtolandanastroid.com" and click "final stages, turn or burn"
6. Wait till one hits the earth and just jump on top of it.
5. Tuck and roll.
4. Pray that the Asteroid's gravity plane actually exists.
3. Go out to sea and find some oil workers... they have a strange 6th sense about Asteroids.
2. Review page 456b of the Star Command Manual.
1. Think, "There is no asteroid."
It's a joint operation. Lots of other folks involved, too. See their mission page.
In fact, it is the first deep space craft to be run by someone other than NASA.
How are you defining "deep space craft"? The Soviets sent missions to Mars and Venus (and the Comet Halley).
smitty asks:
NEAR successfully landed, which is really cool, but since NASA's budget is spent on this thing, what will it be doing now that it's sitting on Eros? I'm assumming it is able to charge its batteries using its solar panels, which should allow it to keep transmitting, correct? Is there anyway that amatures could set up some device so that we can listen to what it has to say?
Well, you've hit on the problem.
First, NASA's budget was well-spent. The NEAR mission completed all of its objectives (despite a "near-miss" on the first approach to the asteroid -- so even this mission wasn't perfect!). The funding runs out on Feb. 14, so this is the last opportunity to do anything. The impact objective seemed the best way to make use of that time.
Second, the real constraint on the various probes we have traversing the solar system is money -- both for control teams, and for the Deep Space Network. The control team for NEAR will disband and go on to other projects, some together, some separately. (I can't wait to see what Johns Hopkins does next.) For quick check-ins with "defunct" probes like Pioneer, the teams are long dispersed and are assembled ad-hoc from veterans and current controllers. Somebody has to pay these people, though some of them would clearly work for free, and support the control center and connectivity.
Third, the Deep Space Network is pretty much always maxed out. It's a limited resource, and projects get time on it in a sort of auction. Time spent collecting data from a dormant, completed project like NEAR is time taken away from active, valuable projects like Cassini and Mars Global Surveyor.
Could amateurs build their own alt-DSN? Technically I imagine it would be possible -- buy up a couple of sold-off Cold War dish stations on the cheap -- but the problem is that the NEAR spacecraft is designed to broadcast at certain frequencies, and those would still interfere with existing DSN communications. Thus the spacecraft, if it continues to survive, will be commanded to suspend communications. I don't know if NEAR has any capability to change its communications parameters enough for an alternate station network to talk to it.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
Awesome job! I wonder -- even though the satellite is officially "not designed to land", the engineers involved kept it in the back of their minds while designing and made tiny adjustments to make it at least possible. The guys at JPL did this for the Voyager missions, making the "grand tour" possible even though Congress initially only gave the go-ahead for a Jupiter/Saturn tour.
Every once in a while, NASA does something amazing.
Amazing step 1: land non-lander on Eros
Amazing step 2: use same non-lander to carve Eros into giant erotic sculpture.
Amazing result 1: Public interest in space increases by 3000%, as do NASA's budget and high-power telescope sales.
Amazing result 2: New "child safe" digital telescopes that won't point at Eros (or Venus, after the finish that project).
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There are some signs of bad science on the CNN site though. I don't believe Eros is in danger of hitting the earth because it has a stable orbit. I hate it when the news over-exagerates dangers, such as when the researcher from the RHIC said there is a small possibility of a black hole being created. Because of that, everyone was sure a giant movie-like black hole would be created at Brookhaven. Next, we'll be hearing that the NEAR landing might have pushed the rock off course, allowing it to hit the earth and destroy everything.
Just hope we can find a bunch of movie stars to quickly blow it up!
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Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Anyone who can land that satellite that well with that kind of lag, I want on my team.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples