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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?"
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?
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?
It looks easy because it worked. There's a lot of things in space exploration that seem like they should be easy, but don't work out that way. If it had crashed (a good probability) nobody would have thought it was easy.
A big part in the decision to land was that the probe had already completed it's mission objectives with room to spare, and wasn't going to do much good just staying in orbit. They might as well take some chances and see how it works out. They had nothing to lose and plenty to gain by trying.
OTOH, sending a probe with the explicit mission to land would be another matter entirely. Now the success or failure of the mission rides on doing something that's never been attempted before. The landing is no longer a free extra, it's an expensive design goal. It would have been a lot more expensive to purposly design the probe for a landing.
There's also the P.R. angle. Every time A NASA mission misses an objective, they take crap from all sides, even if it was a minor secondary objective (especially if that objective had a lot of media appeal). OTOH, if a mission accomplishes all of it's objectives plus a few that nobody even thought of before launch, they get much needed good press.
Of course, landing and takeoff from the asteroid is only half the battle. There's the issue of having enough fuel to return to earth orbit for pickup. Carrying that fuel would have added a lot to the mission cost, and made the landing more difficult (greater mass = more momentum = harder landing).
Hopping NEAR around on EROS a few times will bring valuable real world experiance that will eventually improve the odds for a successful planned land, sample, and return mission.
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.
Let's re-read this sentence a few times, shall we? I rest my case.
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Slashdot: News For Zealots. Stuff That's Hypocritical.
"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."