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Cassini Probe Has Camera Problems
xX_sticky_Xx writes "The BBC is reporting that the last billion dollar NASA probe, Cassini, (enroute to Saturn) is suffering from an unknown source of contamination on its narrow field camera. NASA has attempted to alleviate the contamination, which is causing a haze to appear around images, by "defrosting" it, with so far limited success. Another attempt will be made in January. If this problem can't be resolved this will be extremely disappointing. Cassini is set to expand our knowledge of Saturn more than Galileo did for Jupiter."
Its always sticking its nose where it doesn't belong
Remember always clean your optics
just take off the glass lens, and use the bottom part of your t-shirt to clean it off!
of course, putting 100,000 miles between the two of them could cause a problem...
I read the article, but it wasn't too clear what exactly would be. There isn't much in the way of dust for the thing to run into I would think. There isn't water to condense on the lense either. Would this be dust that the probe has brought along with it for the ride that happened to settle on the wrong part?
right, they measured the lens in inches, but the windshield wiper in centimeters, so it's too small to wipe everything off.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Don't think using a standard of measurement is going to prevent gunk getting on the lens...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
What about plain old space dust? According to this article there's enough of it out there to hamper astronomists when viewing celestial objects from earth. More closer to the point this article describes how people involved in space exploration are concerned with peices of space dust, too small to be tracked, causing serious damage to orbiting satelites. The Cassini article says they're pretty sure that it's related to the deep cold of space, which is why they equipped it with heaters. But if it's not related to the cold, it's not out of the realm of posibility that maybe Cassini simply encountered some of this dust? Although you'd have to think the makers of the satelite thought of this already, but who knows.
I posted to
Maybe it's time to start intalling windshield wipers on spacecraft?
This is a self-referential sig
I would only begin to worry if heating it a few more times doesn't clear it up totally.
So after reading the article (I know, rare for a slashdotter) I started wondering who they named the probe after. Turns out they named it after a 17th century astronomer who was the first to observe Saturn's four moons.
Some more info on the man behind the name of the probe can be found here.
I posted to
This is from the report sent out:
.Recent instrument activities included two Radio and Plasma Wave Science HighFrequency Receiver calibrations. Engineering activities taking place onboardthe spacecraft this week include an Attitude Control Subsystem high-watermark clear and the uplink of the Mission Sequence Subsystem (MSS) D7.6.1Modules.
Cassini Weekly Significant Eventsfor 12/06/01 - 12/12/01The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstonetracking station on Wednesday, December 12. The Cassini spacecraft is in anexcellent state of health and is operating normally. "Present Position" webpage, http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/english/where/
When I was 6, my mom bought this balloon for me. I accidentally let it go and it went higher and higher, never to be seen again.
Sorry NASA.
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Sometimes there's no other way to win, except by falling.
After all the risks that were taken to put this thing in space - it would be a shame for it to go to waste. (Risk = putting 75 LBS of plutonium within a few miles of crashing down onto the earth.)
NASA is having a rough time with it lately. There have been a lot of pretty expensive and embarasing failures. If NASA were a private enterprise I'd suspect a management shakeup. Since it is a government body - I'm not sure what can be done. Clearly something should be done...
Take care,
Brian
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We are almost out of Free Palm m100's...
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This is slashdot, anything can be insightful and true, its kind of like magic.
I`m afraid that the man who ground Hubble`s mirror was moved sideways into the space probe lense optics department. Doh !!
- I throw rocks at retarded kids
"Adequacy.org: Where congenital stupidity is not an option, but a requirement."
Crap you're right... we should be devoting our every thought and action to the events of Sep. 11... not wondering about silly old science... or civil liberties... or even reading web pages... hey wait a minute... what are you doing here?!?! get off line and go do something patriotic with your day!
In news today, Nasa scientists spent all last week trying to find the source of the contaminant on the Lens. After many hours of brainstorming, one of the engineers spilt coffee on a button labeled "Lens Cap". Shortly after, the camera apeared to be functioning correctly. Head NASA Scientists are trying to work out the function of this "Lens Cap" button, but the British designer of the button cannot be contacted, and Nasa officials are still unsure what has happened.
it'll still be winter -- if we waited 'til spring and maybe it'd thaw out on its own.
NASA builds crap, launches it... again.
:P
I can hardly wait till they start sending people to Mars
when you take something from earth pressure to zero pressure you'd be surprised at what will boil off. this is called outgassing, as polymers, etc... lose mass to vapor. the stuff outgassed can then condense on your optics and ruin your pictures. The usual practice is to put everything in a vacuum chamber and get it all out before flight, but this won't always be enough. Also, you can coat surfaces that will outgass, but you need to use anyway (such as electronics circuit boards) with a non-outgassing coating (such as uralane). If some electronics overheat and melt away some of that coating, the materials underneath might, you guessed it, outgass. It is a difficult problem to avoid and it is unfortunate that it might ruin the mission. hopefully not.
This just keeps happening--the Vogon interstellar starliners keep illegally flushing their toilets into space in the vicinity of solar systems. I think we should file a complaint with the local authorities on Alpha Centauri.
The sucker was visible for a LONG time as it rose (very little wind that day). We promptly forgot about it, until about 6 months later. Turns out it ended up in some farmer's field about 200 miles away!
Yeah, completely offtopic, but further proof of just how geeky I was in those days. Thoughts like this are what inspires people to send probes to other planets, I guess.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
...space moths!
Shoulda spent the extra cash for one of those bug shields. Those space moths past Mars are huge!
The BBC article refers to the "Stardust" project as though everyone knows about it...
Stardust project, which had a similar problem that was much worse. In that case, Stardust's team were able to completely remove the contamination
You can read more about that mission at http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov.
What a name.
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Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Maybe it's about time for some fancy inter-stellar windshield wipers. I suppose it's hard to refill wiper-fluid in space though ;-)
I told ya we shouldn't have let that guy with the squeegee wash the lens on the way to Saturn!
Abe: The metric system is the tool of the devil!
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
If dust got on the lens, or inside, most likely the fuzz pattern would be even or random. The fact that it is on the edges of the image suggests that something is condensing.
If the camera was hit by a speck of space dust, perhaps the impact could have created a little cloud of dust when it penetrates (assuming it did not hit the lense or image sensor chip itself. If it did hit one of those, I doubt it would be just the edges.)
The fact that a little heat reduced the problem is also kind of against that theory.
Condensation of something is the most likely exlanation IMO.
Table-ized A.I.
A Jovian toddler mistook the probe for a scooter. Unfortunately, her parents forgot to put the toddler's diapers on.
Or, they forgot to turn on the No Smoking sign.
Table-ized A.I.
Perhaps burritos should be taken off of NASA's cafeteria menu.
Table-ized A.I.
because you only get one chance to road-test it.
(Although parts of older designs are re-used, the only way to space-test the final product is to launch it.)
I wish they would launch 2 smaller probes rather than one big one. Split up the science instruments between them (but put high-res cameras on both). They used to do that in the 60's and 70's. Mariner 9 had a companion that croaked IIRC. Same with Mariner 2 and 4. (One of them was due to a FORTRAN typo between O and 0 (oh and zero)).
The failure rate has been constant over the years more or less, yet the costs have dropped.
The Soviets lost 3 probes at Mars IIRC. I believe their Venus probes were more successful because the atmosphere is so thick near the surface that landing is a breeze (no pun intend.) It is like an ocean there. Even if the probe was dead, it would still land smoothly.
Table-ized A.I.
Seriously though, one wonders if this could be even remotely related. I doubt it highly, but it is an interesting thought...
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
It's Window had a hole or a leak
Table-ized A.I.
I'm not quite sure what the big deal is. They said in the story that not only were they optimistic that it would be fixed, but that the lenses and optics are designed with heaters for this kind of thing. Shouldn't we be happy that finally one of those "just-in-case" prevention measures that NASA spends millions on finally might be the difference between a successful and, well, not-so-successful mission?
It sounds to me like a lot more information needs to come out before we start saying that the mission is even in danger...we do have 2+ more years.
JoeRobe
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
The source of contamination *has* to be the spacecraft itself.
If the contamination were external, it would have had a signifigant (measurable) effect on the momentum of the spacecraft. The space through which it is travelling is pretty much completely empty anyway.
That leaves one plausible possibility: Cassini is leaking something that is condensing on the cold (*very* cold) bits. The most likely cause is a small propellant leak. As far as I know, the spacecraft has three propellants on board, N2O4, N2H4 an monomethyl hydrazine. I'm too lazy to look up the charecteristics of these, but their boiling points differ.
A heating cycle of the lens seems to have helped. I would be *very* surprised if the data from the heating cycle didn't give them a good clue as to the exact contaminant by looking at the amount removed by a known heat input (latent heat of vapourisation)
The big worry is that the leak will leave the spacecraft with insufficient fuel for orbital insertion (unlikely - it's almost entirely a gravity-assist trajectory) or for manoeuvering. That would be bad.
I may, of course, be completely wrong.
Galileo (going to the same neighbourhood) the probe had antenna problems which prevented it from sending images fast enough.
Why is it that every time a probe goes to an interesting place it either gets lost, loses its ability to communicate or somehow otherwise loses its ability to transmit images. How do we know that the probe really is malfunctioning?
It's easier to say that "there's a problem X and we don't get images" and then screen away all those images which might reveal something.
In this case, expect images with "gunk" and therefor unreadable.
It is the ONLY thing I LOVE about USA. I guess many foreigners feel the same way. There is bound to be problems, after all, it is rocket science. That is the agency brought Apollo 13 crew back, how hard could it be to clean a camera lens? Or just bring amazing amount of information with a faulty cam. It is one of two, after all, and there are other data collectors. Have some faith, NASA will solve... Unless your stupid president and idiotic congress cut their budgets further, not leaving enough staff to maintain the lonely probe. Remote possibility? No, just look what had happened to voyagers and pionners.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
Okay, most of the folks here seem to be bashing NASA and jumping to conclusions that the probe is lost. No damn way. They'll come up with a solution soon enough - for one thing, a similar incident occured with the Stardust probe earlier this year. Just take a look at the status reports.
Start at somewhere aroud May 4,2001 and go backwards (by that report, the problem had been fixed). I bet the glitch on Cassini will be fixed just as easily. Note that the problem occured just before christmas, so they probably just tried a "quick fix" to see if it just went away. Like said, they have until 2004(!) 'till Cassini is at its destination to try a number of things. They'll probably get rid of the contamination just by turning on the heaters for a couple of months, but they don't want to start the operation and immediately leave for a christmas vacation (in case something comes up).
"Do something man. Right now."
Yes. Of course it would affect the momentum. But if the leak is slow enough for the vapour to remain close to the spacecraft for it to condense in large enough amounts to obscure a lens, I doubt that the velocity of the escape is enough to have much effect on a six-tonne spacecraft.
Well, I get this idea of Russian space mentality from several (Russian) friends that followed Russia's space program during the 60's.
I wish I had one of those. I have to rely on books instead.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
not exactly an obscure reference.
ok, so I tried... I am not sure what reason there is to continue NASA's existence unless they are serving the future as an example of what NOT TO DO. Perhaps excuses and incompetence can one day be used as a propellent in space? Who knows?!
This happens to my car's windshield all the time! It's just bugs - only of the space variety...
Given that the probe is traveling at 100Kph, it's probably smacked into some migrating space insects and wiped out a few of them (probably the royalty...). Anyway, if the NASA guys had simply used some RainX and Triple-blade wipers, this wouldn't be a problem! Those bugs and space dust would just glide right off (aside: RainX really does work - best stuff I've ever used...)
Also, the way I figure it is all of Humanity has about 10 years until the Space Bugs are able to decode the complete directions to where we are, and come to infest our planet... Time to get those Lunar Lasers online!
Of course, it could be that the software was written by M$, and it has their address on it - so this could be a good thing... If we could just convince them that the goof with the big glasses is also related to the "windshield" that killed their royalty, then we're set! What the DOJ couldn't do, the bugs did! And space bugs at that! (aside: I wonder what M$'s EULA would say about spaceborne bugs after they wipe out their faithful leader...)...
From the 10/25/01 - 10/31/01 weekly status report:
The Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) post-warm-up images were downlinked for analysis. The 15 images were planned in support of the UVIS Spica observation, and were examined for potential changes relative to the pre-warm-up images. Preliminary results show a change in the character of the anomaly with the halo gone but more spreading of the star image than before. ISS also performed a scattered light observation, in an effort to resolve an anomaly observed in C25 when an ISS observation received far more light than expected. This current observation included a series of scans across the sky to see how much scattered light ISS gets at different distances from the sun for a selection of different orientations, to see if reflection off another part of the spacecraft is causing the extra light seen by ISS.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Learn basic HTML, then submit in 'HTML Formatted' mode.
<A HREF="http://www.nasa.gov/";>More info on NASA</A;> as an example of a link More info on NASA
Also <BR> for line breaks and <P> for paragraph breaks.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --- Albert Einstein
IF you had read the article, you would have realised that Galileo was the first to observe JUPITER'S four (largest) moons and SATURN'S rings.
Galileo is one of the world's most famous names. How could you have gotten far enough in life to be able to post on Slashdot without having heard of the guy?
You Fucktard.
The time for school is during a recession.
That very much depends on which hemisphere you're in... January's the second hottest month of the year for us... coming close behind Feb...
Does anybody remember there were protests against the launching of the Cassini probe? Some environmentalists were afraid about the nuclear materials aboard or something like that...