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NEAR to Fly Once More
david.given writes "Yes, those loons at APL just will not leave the spacecraft in peace. The latest plans are to attempt to fire the thrusters again on Feb 14, 1900UTC (1400EST) and lift off the surface of EROS. If the thrusters work, and the trajectory is correct, and the camera is undamaged, and the communications system holds up, they reckon that they should get some more pictures from about 400m up. What's next? They're going to bring it home?"
Makes you think huh, despite all this talk about Silicon VAlley, it's really the East Coast that gets the amazing things done.
East Coast
NEAR
AT&T UNIX
Linux drivers for MWave
West Coast
Mars Lander
Netscape
NT
Well, I could go on.
just to save everyone the time, this decodes to "Nasa 0wns j00"
It really adds that extra realism effect to all those maps and servers that have low gravity set on them!
Remember the RC car that you got for Christmas?
What did you do with it?
Why you ran it until the batteries were dead of course.
Until that time, you ran it everywhere it could go...
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
As you fill up your ROM on the 1750 (I'm assuming that your ARE running in expanded mode, with mode that 64k words of ROM) like past 70% or so, cramming all of your code in get HARD. It's not quite as bad as some of the other bank swap memory setups out there, but by modern standards it's an evil way to address 1 megaword of ROM.
sorry, thus endith my rant ... :-) It's been a long day fighting that damn chip!
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
Well, you'd need a lot more fuel to get the thing back to Earth orbit.
;)
Naah, just target it for an earth-orbit-crossing asteroid and let it sit there until it gets back...
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (LICQ: 85110864)
"Hey, great landing. The press is going mad over here. Just for kicks, we've decided to send you back up for another landing." Poor guys will end up hopping all over Mars. At least until something breaks. :)
That's funny sarcasm guys. I do think it's amazing that they were able to land this thing from millions of miles away and do it successfully. Imagine controling your remote control buggy with a lag time of minutes to hours. Heh, try flying your remote control airplane with the same lag time AND without actually being there to see it do it's thing. Pretty cool stuff they're doing.
Mike
Next they're going to shoot the retro rockets and try to land it closer to the McDonald's.
Nah - the sequence converges... :-)
hehehe. TCP/IP seems to have garnered almost as many religious fanatics as Linux.
Ad Hominem, baby!
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
Didn't they try that one on the moon a while back? (Getting really far out and ramming it at high speed)
No, but NASA did it with Uranus.
Nice idea, but doesn't it double the chance of faliure? I mean, think how stupid you'd look if the asteroid lander failed and your orbiter was still up.. I suppose you could always leave it
there and send another asteroid lander up instead.
Hmm. Why not make the orbiter permenant and manned. Ah, yes, I do believe there is a project
along these lines!
/usr/games/fortune > ~/.signature
Didn't they try that one on the moon a while back? (Getting really far out and ramming it at high speed)
Sig is taking a break!
NEAR is presently 16 light-minutes away, which is way too far for the TCP/IP limit. The Moon is only 1.5 seconds away (3 second round-trip), so TCP/IP can work.
So you're proposing using it as the first asteroid-based observatory. Unfortunately it won't work in this case. Eros is spinning and yawing like a tossed shoe, so the antenna dish rarely points at Earth -- it would be hard to send any images back. Also, the cameras don't have the wonderful stargazing lenses of Hubble, and even if they did they're not on a stable platform so only the brightest objects are briefly visible. And the probe itself won't survive long; three months is the estimate.
If you can land a probe on a rock, how about just leaving it there, and use it as a cheap system to get around the solar system at whatever weird orbit the thing is doing?
Yeah, there's nowhere near enough fuel. I don't have the numbers for Eros, but coming back to Earth from the orbit of Deimos (High Mars Orbit) is about 1.8 km/sec. NEAR's initial fuel supply was only enough for 1.436 km/sec (not counting the reserve). And, that assumes aerobraking in our atmosphere. NEAR has no heat shield -- crispy critter! I have no idea how much fuel it would take, but:
Anyway, we really don't want NEAR back. Without any kind of sampling scoop, etc., odds are poor that any Eros dust would still be on its surface by the time we could pick it up. Even less so, if it aerobraked without a heat shield. ;^)
PS: You're right about the cost of the extra fuel. The rocket equation is an exponential function. A little more starting mass requires lots more fuel for the entire mission.
--
"You've crossed my Line of Death!" "What? No! Where is it?" "Here in the fine print...."
Unfortunately I can't seem to link to the exact comment of an archived story, but use your browser find for the word meat.
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Well, VGER had to come from somewhere right?
Keep in mind that the maximum level of acceleration happens to be directly related to g. If the figures are correct on a different post, the best acceleration you could get from traction is about .0004 m/s^2. It would take a long time to get enough speed to go anywhere.
I don't know why they bothered spending so much money to bring back those Russian guys. They were MIR astronauts.
I had assumed they were going to study rotational movements (maybe even vibrations, using phase shifts of the transmitter's signal?) when they landed.
It's cool that they can do stuff like this, and I understand that yet-more-pictures of a rock in space wouldn't be much fun, but I would have thought that even the "bonus science" at the end of the mission would have been better planned.
--David Burns
I imagine lack of fuel, for one thing...Spacecraft tend to not carry much more fuel than absolutely necessary; NEAR is probably running on fumes right now. The kind of maneuvering they're doing (setting it down and taking off again) take a negligible amount of fuel , compared to changing orbits to rendezvous with Earth again.
Tang. And freeze-dried ice-cream, though I have no clue why anyone would *want* to eat that...
Right now I think NASA is focusing on the unix method of "do one thing and do it well", with the added requirement of "do it cheaply". This mission was meant to go out to the asteroid and take pictures of it, run spectrographic analysis, etc. Your basic ranged sensing package.
I'm sure sending some sort of rover/sample return mission to an asteroid can be expected in the relatively near future. It wouldn't be too much different from the Stardust mission, which is currently on its way to collect material from the tail of the comet Wild-2 and return it to Earth (in 2006).
Right now, though, they're just playing with the last bit of functionality from a defunct piece of equipment. Recall the Lunar Prospector probe, which they crashed into the moon after its mission had been completed, on the off chance that the plume of debris it kicked up would show signs of water. It's a matter of, "we could leave this floating in space forever, or we could try this one last thing before we abandon it." I have to give them credit; they've done some pretty cool things with spacecraft that weren't meant to do them.
Well, this is true. By the time it got near enough that we could pluck it out of space easily, we would have already gone out, grabbed an asteroid, and towed it into low-earth orbit (what the space shuttle travels at) with a craft designed for such an activity (large-scale sample return...yum) for ease of study. Okay, maybe not. But, at any rate, by the time NEAR got back, the only thing it would be useful for is sticking in the Smithsonian.
There's no reason to bring it home. Better to just use and abuse it where it is. See how much we can do with it before the fuel runs out and the camera gets destroyed. Hmmm....Do we need all four solar panels to run the instrumentation? If we oriented it so that one of them was stuck in the dust, we could scoot along and dig little trenches; see if we kick up anything interesting to take pictures of. (and, in space, *everything* is interesting to take pictures of)
Yep...When the Lunar Prospector finished its mission they crashed it into the Moon's south pole in an attempt to kick up water vapor that could be observed from earth...They didn't find any, but the chance of finding any was given at about 10%, assuming that there was some there to find. But it was a good try...
They used maneuvering thrusters to keep the probe in orbit around Eros until they decided to land it...That's part of the life cycle estimate for an object in orbit around a body; how much fuel are you willing to devote to keeping it there? Even orbits around Earth decay over time; every satellite up there will reenter eventually.
Of course, this begs the question, "why's the moon still up there?" All right, so maybe there *are* stable orbits. But we don't have anything to put in orbit that we expect to use in 100 years, so we don't bother perfecting the process of putting stuff there.
This reminds me of when I used to turn up the filament voltage on the tube tester to torture the poor little vacuum tubes.
Use your hard-earned Large Scale Integrated Circuits to fight the space program.
Quick, before they invent something else for you to complain with.
Looks like they want to keep playing with the damn thing until they break it!!!
boy, do i wish i was a moderator right now; this msg would get all my points as "insightful"
you have managed to sum up the entire hopeless media situation in three simple sentences... hyping up a completely nonexistant problem in order to freak out the population and increase ratings, while totally glossing over any REAL problems, like bad parenting and the destruction of free speech.
and we wonder why everyone is so paranoid.
oh well...
ìì!
I wonder .. has anyone ever set up a webserver in space?
anacron
I read slashdot for the articles.
at 225 mil i'd say we've gotten our bang outta our tax dollar : P --dexsun
Mmmmmmm.....flaming eros....argrghghghr [drool]!
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
if the probe is laying on it's side or on an angle, isn't it going to be difficult for it to blast off without it flopping around the surface?
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
...I suppose they weren't satisfied with only *one* controlled crash landing. ;-)
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
There is a very little chance that they will get pictures of the impact sight.
First, the camera has to be undamaged and working.
Second, when they come up, they won't know the trajectory relative to the motion of the asteroid. They are planning on taking pictures, but it will be where-ever the camera is pointing at the time. Remember, the asteroid is spinning, but NEAR will probably just come straight up off the surface. So the landing site will be rotating away.
Third, the lens is wide angle? (I don't know my camera lenses that well) From what I understand, it won't "focus" on a small area, the picture will be too wide. And too low. They have to get up to 400M to take a picture.
There are going to upload linux and set up a web server and when it's slashdoted it will finally explode.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
Sure, the load time would be brutal, but I bet a lot of people would kill to have a .eros domain name...
mirrors:
http://near-mirror.jpl.nasa.gov/news/index.html
http://near-mirror.boulder.swri.edu/news/index.h tm l
Does anyone know where I can buy me one of those NEAR things? That seems fun!!! In all seriousness though, it is pretty cool that we can do all of this stuff. Does anyone know what OS their software is running on?
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Sorry. That is scheduled to happen in 9 years time.
--- Can i borrow your Clue-Stick(tm)? I need to go beat a few people with it...
I love the
But it Bill Gates is Sauron, who is Gandalf, Frodo, et al? Here are some of my ideas.
- Steve Jobs is Gandalf. A bit loopy sometimes, has had a rebirth
- Linus is Frodo. On a mission to destroy Sauron
- Steve Ballmer is Gollum. A low life.
Anyone care to add to the list?--- Can i borrow your Clue-Stick(tm)? I need to go beat a few people with it...
SPACE HACKER2: lets lanch it off!"
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
    Yeah, we could send out a probe that can return samples from a giant rock in space, but I'm telling you it's a waste of my taxpayer dollars. I'd rather spend that money on a new SUV than on a ridiculously overpriced hunk of metal. I mean, those probes cost millions of dollars. So what if that comes down to cents per taxpayer? I'd rather have my 50 cents than promote scientific research. I mean, shouldn't research be the exlusive domain of businesses and corporations? They're the ones that are supposed to research so that they can charge us to use or think about their technology. I hate having the government monopolize all the poor corporations' freedom to innovate! Down with government funded research! Huzzah!
There's prob not enough gravity for traction
No way we're losing NEAR on *my* watch!
It is possible that there exists a orbit around the asteroid that eventually closes with out passing through the asteroid, it just won't be circular. It's more likely to be some form of space filling orbit that won't ever close, but won't hit the asteroid or get to far from it though. On the other hand, you couldn't predict the exact orbit it will follow as this is a pretty much classical example of a chaotic system.
I think there should be a moderation option for
"No sense of humor at all"
It was funny for gawds sake!
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
it's cool as hell, but a lot of stuff has to work right at the correct time for this time. good luck NEAR.
If they make a small hop this time, might they be able to lift off twice? Maybe even 3 or more times? They don't seem to have much to lose, so I wouldn't put it past them.
Bugrit! Millenium hand and shrimp!
This should read. When NASA tries to land something, it crashes. When anyone else tries to do it, it lands safely and can even take off again.
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
"NEAR to fly" The human being has less than twice the number of genes of a fly, so we are are very near to the fly... ;)
Seriously, the number of genes doesn't mean very much...
--
ACid
--
ACid
The irony is that if we were to imagine such a scenario where someone had patented lunar landing, then asteroid landing would be likely to be free of this patent litigation over some technicality such as "People don't know asteroids but everyone knows what the moon is". Stupid marketroid reasoning at its finest, that's the state of IP legislation today. Smart lawyers defeat smart patents. I think i'll patent "Exertion of legal knowledge in a courtroom in order to protect the guilty" and have all lawyers shot. Twenty years ago, they said computers were the future. Wrong, law is the future.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Huh? The probe has been orbiting EROS for the past year... How can you say this?
*** I am the real stylewagon
Sadly, the budget for the project only allowed for it to be operation until tomorrow... I think that was one of the main reasons they wanted to land(crash) the thing on Eros. They wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. They're doing a great job. Why not keep trying to get new images while they still can(have dish time and money). Will someone donate another $200mil to launch another mission like this? unlikely.. they were lucky to get the grant for this mission. Money rules the world...
Actually, the moon's orbit is decaying too, the moon just has enough momentum that it decays reeaaly slow. I also seem to remember that it's moving away from us.
Let me get this straight - the Mars guys build a probe to go to Mars and crash (its designed for this) and it can't. They tank another mission because they can't tell Metric from Imperial (Who really uses Imperial anymore anyway? backward...) measurementsl....
These NEAR guys build a ship that isn't meant to land on anything, and they land it and take it off again....
Clearly, we know who should be getting the budget upgrade!
One of my buddies is an Instrument Scientist on NEAR. He tells me they've got pretty much everything they could have asked for our of NEAR (I guess they're just playing around now because they can and maybe to avoid putting a lid on things... *wink*). He ran the Infrared Interferometer (or something like that) and he was really busy when they were on the approach run in the first place.
These guys have done an awesome job and I think they deserve all of the Kudos they can get. This is an example of how space missions should be run. Hurrah!
Tomb
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
Aris
Yeah, we all remember the Andremeda Strain.
*snicker*
Not Chrichton's best...
---- http://www.opedog.com/
Which makes another interesting point. When you try to make a device that does everything all at once, it doesn't do anything particularly well. But if you make a device that does just a few tasks, the ingenuity of the human mind can find lots of amazing ways to use it. KISS
Maybe the above should be required reading for the people talking about the Open GroupWare project...
The easiest way to detect undetected asteroids, is by detecting the ones that haven't been detected before... Since optical means are the only ones available for cateloging that're currently used, that leaves an awful lot to be desired...
Consider how long it took to determine how many moons Saturn and Jupiter had, using optical means... If we used that method for predicting an earth path crossing asteroid, then we'd be watching 1/2 the population die, our walls would be shaking on the remaining half of the planet as most of us go "Huh? Wha'?"
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
All you gotta do is hack the roms for "Lunar Lander", and you could play it on MAME!
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Why isn't there a moderation option for "Idiot"?
i wish i was but oh well
Just call it testing. After all, they spent more than 200.000.000$ to reach for there and meet all their goals. Successful operations like this are a proof of concept that will bring trust and therefore money for the next missions. And that's badly needed after the 2 consecutives crashes on Mars.
É que os desafinados também têm um coração
They'd better get NEAR out of there quickly, 'cause "something wonderful is going to happen".
If they do bring it home we will be at risk of a NEARmiss with MIR.
hahahaha, somebody stop me.
"....landing a man made object on a rocky body or a plurality of bodies which are affected by the gravity of the earth [terra]."
They are also objecting to the use of their symbol R in asteroid, so to comply news outlets should report: Near lands on asteoid
If Godzilla did not exist, man would have had to create him.
Well, while it is true that alien organisms that mutate the human race do come from asteroids, especially when a space probe returns, first we need to have male astronauts rendevous with it, a blackout to occur, and the astronauts wives to become pregnant very soon thereafter.
Hmmm, maybe that's why it's called Eros!?!
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Are you a Coloradan or a Democrat (or both)?
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
Whats to stop them from just hurdling it in our direction?
Clearly it cant land (it was just a freak of a design flaw!) on earth... but we could get some samples of eros if it were to fly back into earths orbit...
Whats stopping it? What are they going to do with it afterward, just let it sit there?
Fight censors!
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
Well, as has been pointed out in response to previous stories, these guys also missed their orbital insertion the first time around - something that I don't think NASA has ever done before. Thier probes might have crash and explode, but they crash and explode on target.
Why?
At 5 MPH. Let's see Ford, GM or anyone else do that!
These JPL / JH engineers are crazy.
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
Make sure you say hi to Pluto along the way!
because, "...unless acted upon by an outside force." There is a lot of that pesky gravitational force lying around out there ;)
Yeah, and while we all know that monsters come from the moon, there weren't any there when we went. Maybe they were hiding.
-Jason-
Cool idea, (reminds me of recent posts concerning ANTS or mini-sattellites..) but the majority of the threat to earth is the undetected ones. perhaps we could use the ANTS to go out searching... land... collect data and then launch to find others. (or even as you suggest, leave a tiny transmitter behind, i'm thinking single chip action with a solar panel... very cheap and small :)
"Ummmm..."
Just let the poor thing go, hasn't it done enough already?
Of course, what would they do with it if they got it to take off again? Land it again?
Interesting how design flaws end up being more helpful, otherwise this could have been another Mars orbiter incident -- "Oops, you mean we're supposed to deal with Newtons of force?? What kind of physics is that??"
"Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs."
I am not surprised, and was wondering yesterday if they would try something like this.
The gravitaional pull of a body as small as Eros, is a fraction of 1g, so it should be reasonably feasible to relaunch it, and possibly even achieve a stable orbit, if not escape velocity.
You know, you got a great idea there. Also the takeoff might be visable from the hubble space telescope ( i hope the point it ), given there is a chance of failure, but look at everything they have done.
Now what can we tell with the plume from takeoff and recrashing
1) the plume it might show the composition of matter it contains.
2) the effect of gravity ( we might change the orbit )
3) we could make it a homing beacon for future travel ( not a very bright one but point the panels correctly and it should transmit a signal for a long time and could be used as a backup triangulation point
this list goes on and on
ONEPOINT
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Actually Eros is on a crash course for earth and the NEAR (Nuke Eros After Rendezvous) mission was to blow it up. Sadly the bomb failed to go off and in a last ditch attempt to nuke the asteroid NASA is trying to reach critical mass by colliding with the asteroid. Cross your fingers, finally we will know which of last weeks polls answers will be right.
On a serious note that is unbelievably impressive. Maybe NASA would have more success if they just jury-rigged all there stuff.
Scenario: NEAR's take-off thrust slightly alters Eros' orbit, and twenty years later the asteroid smashes into the Caribbean. The tidal-wave thus produced drowns APL retirees vacationing in the Virgin Islands.
So how do I copyright this storyline?
My Atari Portfolio! I'm proud of it.
Well it seems that this thing(Eros) is spinning at a constant rate right? Well why not just roll the damn shoe over and point the lens out to space. I am assuming the the solar pannels are functional so it has power. Now just leech a ride and take some pictures with that little bugger for the next couple years. Granted it would be like droping a sub to the bottom of the ocean and something interesting just happends to swim by but hell why not. You could have yourself a orbit cycle of a rock the size of Manhattan, rotation for different views, and maybe even a birds Eye view of something interesting down the road. Neck_of_the_Woods
Neck_of_the_Woods
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
Hell, they aren't just going to bring it home, they're going to land that bad boy on the White House lawn.
Y'all gotta remember, there's a goddamn texan in the Oval Office right now, and them boys at NASA are in Houston.
Yeeeeeeeeeehaw!
Brant
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
There isn't enough propellant to get it back to Earth.
Well, that depends. If there's enough fuel to break orbit, it wouldn't take much more fuel to point it at Earth. It'd just take the probe a *really* long time to get back home. Of course, that is assuming all the initial return calculations were perfect.
Let's say that the probe weighs 100kg. (I don't know the specifics on NEAR's design, so I'm making up a probe with nice round numbers for my example. You can extrapolate this to NEAR's design.) Further assume that the probe burned 200kg of fuel en route (not an unreasonable payload/fuel ratio), making the launch weight 300kg.
Now, let's make it a round trip. At first, you would think that you could simply double the amount of fuel on board. But, remember that you've got to carry all of the fuel for the return trip, which becomes part of the payload for the outgoing trip. So, in order to carry all 300kg to the destination (100kg payload + 200kg fuel), you need 600kg of fuel. Thus, the total amount of fuel to move the 100kg payload is 800kg.
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Home is where you hang your @.
"Actual pictures of the first landing spot on Eros are not likely to come into view, he said."
Oh yeah...that's in the article... ;oP
-Caino
Don't touch my .sig there!
frogbots!! hop hop boing boing and they're cute too
APL Engineer 1: "You said you wanted to be around when I made a mistake; well, this could be it, sweetheart."
APL Engineer 2: "I take it back. NEARs going to get pulverized if it stays out there much longer."
APL Engineer 1: "I'm going to take it in closer to one of the big ones."
APL Engineer 2: "Closer?"
Gold, robotic APL Engineer: "Closer?"
Furry APL Engineer: "Bark!"
APL Engineer 2: "I hope you know what you're doing."
APL Engineer 1: "Yeah, me too."
NEAR sucessfully lands in a crater of EROS...
Two days later...
APL Engineer 2: "I don't know. I have a bad feeling about this."
NEAR begins to shake
APL Engineer 1: "All right, lets get out of here!" ...
I just hope they get some decent pictures of the space slug on the way up...
No, they're going to DISNEY LAND!
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Well, since the camera can't focus on anything inside of 500 yards (it's designed for longer range viewing), maybe it would be nice to get this thing up and flying for a few days more, some more close-in pictures.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
NASA is going to do all future space exploration with NEAR.
NASA: Can we please have funding for another mission? We could build this great space craft and...
Congress: What's wrong with NEAR? Can't you keep using that?
NASA: We used NEAR last time. We put it on EROS and then we found there wasn't anything to do with it once it was there, so we took it back off. Can't we have one with more toys on it?
Congress: No, go away. Can't you see we're busy?
Because they couldn't make up the data fast enough.
----
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
There was some talk very early on in the mission that they would try to touchdown and then leave the asteroid again. Recently they've only been talking about the touchdown (controlled crash landing?) because of the high risk of damaging the probe. Now that that's sucessful and they can apparently send a new program to the device, it's time to finish the show.
I can't wait to see a picture of the mark they made on the surface of Eros. Way to go, APL! This is going out in style.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I don't think that's correct. Breaking free of Eros gravity would still leave it in orbit around the Sun. There's a minimum delta v necessary to get it on a trajectory where it would cross Earth's path when the Earth was there and an additional delta v necessary to get it in orbit around Earth.
It's all academic at this point, the burn won't take place and if it had, it would not have placed the craft in orbit areound Eros, just landed it elsewhere. See this press release from JHUAPL.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
There isn't enough propellant to get it back to Earth.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
SPACE HACKER 1: Cool.. Um, let's land it again!!
SPACE HACKER 2: yeah! I bet I can get it right in that big crater.
SPACE HACKER 1: Let's see how low an orbit we can keep it in without it hitting!
SPACE HACKER 2: Let's take it reeeally far out, then turn it around and ram the asteroid!
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
Instead, **Two** probes goes out, one lands, takes samples, and launches samples back into orbit where probe two rendezvous with the payload, and heads back Earthwards.
Samples are then picked up, later, in Earth Orbit by the shuttle, or another probe, preferably a re-useable one, that would return it to the shuttle or the ISS. . . .
Just landing on the surface has limited scientific use, any lander which wants to really investigate primordial bodies such as asteroids and comets need to be somewhat more firmly attached. Look at the Rosetta site for an idea of some of the problems that landing on and doing science with a comet can cause.
--
Actually it is rocket science...
Can they get it inserted into a stable orbit around the rock again?
:-)
Possibly, but why would they want too? They have exhausted the possibilities of that anyway, thats why the decided to land (ok, it was more complex than that, it has a lot to do with budgets as well as science).
Can they escape the gravity of the rock entirely?
Again, possibly, but why? All the instruments are designed to look at an asteroid from close up. There are probably too low on fuel anyway, and I doubt there is enough budget to do anything useable.
Can they skitter across the landscape, trying for more landing sites and near-ground imaging?
Which is probably what they are doing, taking more and more risks each time, because the are only going to have very very limited amounts of access left on the DSN [1]. Probably so long as the press is interested NASA will find them time on it though.
Footnote [1] Initially typed as DNS...<sigh> I need to get out more
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Actually it is rocket science...
OK - I'm totally freaked out now. I did a calculation in my head based on your reasoning and came up with an answer: NEAR would need an infinite amount of fuel to get there and back. I need to go to bed now...
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
I just don't understand this NASA / JHUAPL team. You'd think that crashing into an astroid would be enough, BUT NO, these guys need a second time. Just get it right the first time. You're giving us space-probe-obituary writers from getting ulcers.
<serious>This is quite impressive.</serious>
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
And then send Bruce Willis up after it.
I wouldn't imagine that anyone would consider an asteroid landing an obvious extention of a lunar landing.
All your events are belong to us.
One of the less-well known subtleties of slashdot is how to link to a comment in an archived story.
http://slashdot.org/science/01/01/22/1710234.shtml #23
All your events are belong to us.
What's the Ring? This is a hard one.
Someone you trust is one of us.
There's no reason not to see what else this thing can do. It's completed it's mission, it's set to become nothing but space flotsam, why not fire it up and blow a few doughnuts?
From this last picture taken before landing, you can see that some sentient being intentionally commandeered the spacecraft's controls.
This is probably to blind us from realizing that it's re-launching to invade packed with micro-organisms intent on feasting on human flesh
- passion
If it's been this easy, why haven't they just sent a rover out that can return asteroid samples? I mean, if they can set a craft down that wasn't even supposed to land, how much harder is it to make one that is?
anacron
Am I the only one who thinks it is a little suspicious that NEAR, which was "not designed" to land on the asteroid, and had only a 1 in 100 chance of survival. The craft is now planning to take off and land again. I think the designers may have actually had some capability of landing in mind from the start, but didn't talk about it.
But in order to get to your bed, first you have to get half way to your bed.
And once you get half way, you'll have to go half of the distance remaining, and you'll still be only 3/4 of the way to your bed.
But once you get 3/4 of the way to your bed, you'll have to go half of the remaining distance again, and then only be 7/8 of the way...
I feel bad for you... you'll need an infinite amount of time to get to your bed.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
They should set up an arcade-style coin-op outside and let people play with NEAR for $10,000 a shot. That way, they can generate enough cash for the next mission!
"Whoa triple point-score! I just got NEAR to do a combo-move!"
--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
I can see it now:
Geez...
I am NOT saying that I think this happened at all. I am just saying that we have no way of verifying that this is true.
Well I dont want to start any conspiracy theories, I just thought others might find this possability interesting.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
::NASA engineer comes in the room::
NASA Engineer: "Say guys, how many inches of height does the thing have to break to reach escape velocity?"
APL Tech: "What the HELL did you just say??"
Men believe what they want. - Caesar
200 years from now that asteroid will be a floating museum piece that people will pass by on their tour of the solar system. Leaving it there will be a reminder of what we went through to get that thing there.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Is a shame that they didn't pack enough fuel to just give it one good shove back towards earth orbit. Might be nice to grab it on a flyby with a shuttle, and see if NEAR managed to keep any dust along for the trip. Sure, it wasn't designed to take samples...but it wasn't designed to land and take off again either
Scientist 1 to Scientist 2: Stop hogging Lunar Lander! You got past level 1, now I want to play!
Set yer phasers to stun. The Linux Pimp
--It's Pimptastic!--
Scientists admit that the surface of Eros was not as interesting up close as it had been from wider views. "We definitely had 'space goggles' on," explained Farquhar.
NEAR stayed on the asteroid for a few hours, made breakfast and idle chit-chat. But after a while, he could tell that it was his time to go. Firing its reverse-thrusters, NEAR left the surface never to return. NASA engineers excitedly noted that the landing and take-off have prepared the asteroid for future landings.
This Won't Hurt A Bit. We're Just Going To Shove This Probe Up Your Asteroid
Actually the fact that they could drop a probe onto Eros and maintain functionality brings an interesting idea to mind:
While the best method we have of cataloging asteroids is currently by using optical telescopes (a tedious and slow method for tracking their movement as well), why not make a series of miniprobes that will land on every asteroid as they're detected, so that their movements could be tracked with radio telescopes instead?
The benefits could be two-fold, one being that it would be easier to tell undetected asteroids apart from tagged ones, second being that any changes in path could be easily detected...
For those saying "What'll it cost?", well, what would it cost to rebuild after a smaller asteroid decimates several hundred square miles? Or worst, what would it cost to rebuild after a large one hits? A few hundred million to billion in disposable probes designed as a radio collar for stray asteroids beats trillions in damage if one slips through undetected...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
We'll find out in 2002 - there's a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science called Muses-C that is due to try to collect and return samples from an Asteroid.
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 /. posters were blaming NASA for yet another failure! Indeed the faster-better-cheaper policy was being severely criticized.)
Dan
The latest plans are to attempt to fire the thrusters again on Feb 14..
Hey those are my plans too tomorrow if you know what I mean...
CNN is reporting that the project has been given another week of deep space network time to continue getting readings observations.
a nd ing.02/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/02/13/near.l
A few quick articles from
The New Scientist
USA Today
An interview with Vince Cerf
I'm not sure what has been done lately if anyone has some more recent links let us know.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
What's next?
I'll tell you what's next. They'll make their final log entries, clean the crud out of their desks, and get ready for the next assignment. Why? Their funding runs out tomorrow at midnight. It's a shame.
Heard on CNN:
The gravity is so weak that a 160 lb astronaut would "weigh" only about one ounce.
Given this, I was amazed that a 5 mph crash wasn't just a complete bounce. They're running out of fuel on the NEAR, so I don't know what their next choice will be.
Can they get it inserted into a stable orbit around the rock again?
Can they escape the gravity of the rock entirely?
Can they skitter across the landscape, trying for more landing sites and near-ground imaging?
Interesting thoughts on what to do with a now-disposable craft.
[
No! They're going to let it land again. They just want to get a few more pictures with the resources remaining. The probe itself might be solar powered, but the thrusters aren't.
By the way, does anybody else think the "official diagram" looks like legos?
"well thats it boys we have photed the entire rock what do we do now?"
SPACE HACKER1: lets try and land it!
SPACE HACKER2: COOL the next day
SPACE HACKER1: well that was fun whats next?"
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
We need to leave it there!!! How else will we know when Eros is about to hit Earth ??? It could kill your children!!!
"TONIGHT ON FOX.."
end communication
Budget cuts have often come with the simple reasoning that not enough comes out of the space program and individual missions rarely bring in value to exceed their cost.
The NEAR mission has been a total success beyond anyone's wildest dreams. They even recovered from almost certain tragedy when a mis-fire forced them a year off course. It has proven that sometimes the value of the mission does exceed the cost.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
When this team gets finished with little NEAR, they need to be put in charge of a Mars Landing project.
Were Eros not moving relative Earth, were Eros not at a different distance from the Sun than Earth, were spacetime flat between Eros and Earth, then yes, all it would take would be a small amount of fuel to get from one to the other.
However:
You have to put in a substantial change in velocity (delta-v) to get from Eros to Earth with any hope of not becoming a crispy critter in a meteoric reentry. You have to change your potential energy from the Sun's gravitational field. You have to make the transit so that you end up relatively motionless to the Earth at the time when you are relatively close to the Earth.
So, it takes a LOT of fuel to get there. If you take enough fuel to get BACK, you have to take even more fuel to get THERE, because you have to move the fuel to get back. Then you need even more fuel to haul the fuel to haul the fuel, and then some fuel to haul the fuel to haul the fuel to haul the fuel....
www.eFax.com are spammers
Everyone knows that asteroids are the main source of killer bacteria that will hunt the human race and turn us into mutants. I don't want to become a mutant. Unless I get superpowers like the X-men that is. Then it would be cool and I welcome all those killer bacteria. But only if I get superpowers!
This type of tomfoolery is exactly why the government should be completely in control of space exploration.
If NASA had handled this like they did on Mars, that ship would have STAYED crashed.
From the NEAR page and mirrors "Spacecraft not to be relaunched from Eros The NEAR mission operations team disabled a redundant engine firing today that would have been activated if it became necessary to adjust the spacecraft's orientation in order to receive telemetry from the ground. But because NEAR Shoemaker landed with a favorable orientation, and telemetry has already been received, it is no longer necessary to move the spacecraft from its resting-place on the surface of Eros." http://near-mirror.boulder.swri.edu/news/flash/01f eb13_2.html
I don't know if this was posted before, but I assume that the pictures they take when this lifts off will look much the same as the ones that were taken on the landing as can be seen in this link: Landing Photos
http://www.codewolf.com - Just good stuff to waste time
When NASA try to land something, it crashes. When they try to crash it, it lands safely and can even take off again.
There's a pattern here. Can you see what it is yet?
Scientists in a final attempt to squeeze every dollar out the NEAR project are going to launch the tiny spacecraft into the Sun. The NEAR has already provided facinating data by landing on an astroid, by crashing into a moon crator, by dipping into the rings of Saturn, by plumitting into the deep oceans and being swallowed by a giant squid, and most recently by being used as a target during the latest anti-ballistic missle tests. Go little buddy! go!
Someone you trust is one of us.
"OW! Great Vrebzjneb, what the photon was THAT?"
"It sounded like something crashing into the surface. Zarbonn, I thought you said you'd fixed the problem!"
"I did, I did! Just let me go take a look...."
time passes
"...Aw, geez."
"Well, what was it?"
It's that stupid shiny box with wings. It crashed *again*, this time on the other side of the asteroid."
"What!? You mean they sent a second one?"
"No, no, it's the same one. It lifted off and crashed down again."
"How did it do that? I thought you said you'd broken all the electronic bits off!"
I said I'd broken the camera off so it couldn't see us. I didn't think it'd be able to lift off again after being beat up that bad in the first crash, so I left it alone. I figured the garbagemen would pick it up next Wurblesday anyhow, so I left it alone."
"Well, that's just great. Now I'm going to have to help you pick it up and carry it all the way to the other side of the rock so that they *do* pick it up."
"No, just relax, I'll give Zarkkel a call tomorrow afternoon and have him bring his tow rocket. He owes me a favor anyways."
"Well, go up and break all the rest of the bits off so that it doesn't go off a third time. The last thing we need is to have that thing crashing through our ceiling like those poor Martians did just last cycle."
"Already done. By the way, I thought I could swipe those solar cells and hook them up to the transmitter next weekend. If they provide enough extra power, we should be able to pick up the pay-per-view movie channel they're broadcasting from Titan."
"Great! Say, you don't think that shiny transmitter box could have come from Earth, do you?"
"I doubt it. After we buzzed their last box and made it crash into Mars instead of orbiting it, you'd think they'd have learned their lesson."
"You'd think. 'Intelligent life' my berizzekl."