Slashdot Mirror
Deep Space One Mission Comes To An End
jfoust writes "NASA's Deep Space One mission will officially end this week, according to published reports. The spacecraft was launched over three years ago to test advanced technologies like ion drives and, despite the failure of its star tracker, was able to make a successful flyby of the comet Borrelly in September. The project tried to extend the mission by several months to fly by an asteroid, but could not coax the funding needed for the mission extension out of NASA. There's a short summary about the mission's end at spacetoday.net, and more details from the AP and the JPL Universe employee newspaper."
Time on the Deep Space Network, the pay for the engineers who operate the spacecraft, the pay for the scientists who study the data, etc, etc, etc. I dunno if I'm feeding a troll or not but I'm tired right now and I'm half asleep and I don't care.
There's the cash to employ the team of engineers to monitor it, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. You've got to worry about the costs of securing antenna time (not cheap), the costs of computing time (also not cheap), and the costs of maintaining the facilities that could be used for other purposes; space ain't cheap, and any funding they secure for this project has to come at the detriment of another, possibly more interesting , project. This unit was designed to be more of a testbed than anything else, so its already fulfilled its mission objectives. The first comet flyby was done simply because NASA thought it would be interesting to try, it's not designed to handle several missions like this, as the satelite floats out there, the greater the chance that something will catastrophically fail. NASA simply decided that it was time to give this bird a kind send-off.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
For example, there are many people who would willingly donate their time and expertise to the SETI program. But for years they had to fight for funding. Why? Radio telescope time doesn't come cheap. And building your own isn't exactly feasible, either.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Xenon gas is ionized and then accelerated rearward through electrical repulsion. Xenon
.999 lightspeed. Knowing this, what would
ions go backwards, probe goes forwards.
What is so novel about this approach? High efficiency and much greater velocity potential
than chemical propulsion.
A particle accelerator can accelerate things
to
be the theoretical maximum velocity of an ion
drive equipped craft? Pretty fucking fast.
When the star tracker failed in 1999, I wept, for I was sure that the mission was doomed. When the ground crew, in a long stroke of genius, kept it going, I wept for joy.
In the past year and a half or so, DS 1 hasn't been doing so much. WIth most of its objectives achieved, the mission became largely a test of how long it would last. Nevertheless, it was always fun to read Dr. Marc Rayman's mission logs, "widely thought of and commonly spoken of in the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy as the most reliable source of information on this bold mission of exploration."
This fall, the probe paid a visit to comet Borrelley. Nobody knew where in the tail the rock itself was, but DS 1's job was to get as close to it as possible, and send back pictures. Nobody expected it to work. If anything, this was supposed to be a dignified death for the bird, which the September 9 log referred to as being "kept flying with duct tape and good wishes." The chances that the probe would do anything but smash into the comet and die, or be pommeled to death by the microdust in the coma, were astronomically slim. But somehow, miraculously, it survived, and with the pictures to prove it.
DS 1 was the stuff of science fiction, and that so many things went right is simply amazing. While I , like Dr. Rayman, am happy that it lived so long, I think we are all somewhat sad to see it go. But we can be consoled by the fact that the funding, the DSN time, the space, and the positively brilliant staff that have kept DS 1 running will now move on to projects that have even more excitement and adventure to offer us, and science will march on, at a steadily accelerating tempo.
\
All set up to go by an asteroid but can't spring for the required sliver of incremental funding? Welcome to the new NASA. From a recent newspaper article (I think Houston Chronicle):
""...No one really knows what a finished station would cost. NASA said earlier this year that it faces a $4.8 billion shortfall over the next five years. Sean O'Keefe, nominated by President George W. Bush to become NASA administrator, testified Friday that he had no confidence in that number or any other estimate he had heard so far.
At the close of the hearing Friday, Mr. O'Keefe was asked an open-ended question: "What is your vision?"
.
Mr. O'Keefe spoke for several minutes about "prudent management principles," reinvigorating "the entrepreneurial spirits" of NASA, the importance of collaboration with other elements of the federal government, the need to be mindful of safety and the possibility of taking advantage of this moment when NASA is at a crossroads.
.
He did not mention space."
DS1 was actually part of NASA's cheaper/faster program. They tested a whole slew of totally new technologies, put it on a (relatively) cheap probe, and off it went.
As for using it as a listening post, I'd be very surprised if it had any equipment onboard to be of much use. It's got a finite amount of manuevering propellant, which is required to point an antenna at the Earth to send back whatever does manage to collect. If it hasn't run out yet, it will after not too long. Finally, there has to be a staff planetside to tell the probe what to do, when to send back data, etc. That's salaries and equipment that's better spent elsewhere.
So, no, it wasn't a waste of money. They set out to test new approaches, almost all of them worked fantastically. And after they completed the intended mission, they went off and did another one. There's nothing more it can do that'd be worth the trouble.
The time and money was well spent, I'd say, but it's done now. Look back on its accomplishments with pride, and look forward to the projects that will benefit from the results.
They actually performed better then expect, that is why they tried to extend the use of it. DS1 was basicially designed to fire then crash, but it worked so well, the continued to use it.
It's not manned, but it doesn't fly itself. That requires ground based controllers (the mission operations folks) plus some expensive time using the Deep Space Network dishes (as others have mentioned already). The mission ops center is not exactly free either. Throw in some project management people, PR folks, and the scientists that are actually doing the extended mission, and the bill starts to add up.
No one's saying "if you don't give us money, DS1 will stop flying". What they're saying is "if you don't give us money, we can't continue to operate DS1 and collect data from it, so it'll fly along doing nothing" (seems like kind of a waste, doens't it?).
Why does it take a million dollars for everything we do at Nasa?????? Why can kids build soda can satalites for 20$ and Nasa build soda can satalites for 20 million? whats the damn difference
While I have no particular wish to defend NASA, they are not entirely at fault here. There're two reasons that NASA spacecraft cost so much:
(1) They are far more complicated, ambitious, and longer-lived than their student-built counterparts. NASA spacecraft operate in extreme conditions, doing unprecedented work, for years at a time. They have to work, so they are designed to be robust, redundant, and fault-tolerant. Trust me, this doesn't come cheap - and NASA's got a lot better at making it cheap in the last few years.
Student-built satellites typically don't do much (a couple of minor experiments), although there are some neat things on the way (Three-corner sat for example). More importantly, student sats don't have to last as long, they only go to LEO, and no one cares if they fail. That means cheaper parts, less redundancy, and a simpler design.
(2) NASA also has to contend with the whole government appropriations issue. The best way to get congressional support is to have your program spend a little money in a bunch of different states. Let's face it, a large, arbitrarily distributed project (split up for political rather than technical reasons) is likely to cost more than the same project carried out in one central location. Plus NASA has to carry out all sorts of PR functions, and otherwise impress Joe Q. Public so that their budget doesn't get axed completely.
Which is not to say that NASA couldn't do better. They've done some pretty stupid things at times, and taken some enormous risks. On other hand, they've also done some pretty amazing stuff. NASA's biggest problems are corrosive bureaucracy, unrealistic project management, and congress.
If you really want a national space program to be proud of, write your congress-person. Don't say "Give NASA more money". Just say "Get off NASA's back, and let it do its job without having to pay a political bribe to everyone on congress. Ask for results, not for some concession for your home state. This is a national space program".