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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."
I am not too experienced in this area, but I often wonder why it costs so much to keep something like this going.
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
Cannot coax the funding out of Nasa?
What funding?
How do you need "funding" to send signals to an already launched, 30year spacecraft? Just press the keys!
Seriously, if you can't "fund" it, give me the docs and I'll do the damn mission! And I bet there are many, more qualified people, who would do the same.
How much is it to buy a DS1 remote control? I would love to have that for Christmas. Maybe they should auction off control of it.
"Cool, look ma! I got my very own deep space probe!"
"That's nice dear..."
The ion drive aboard the DS1 broke several records with its stellar (literally) tortiose-vs-hare performance. Does anyone know if this technology has any potential for being adapted to the ISS? Due to friction with the upper atmosphere, ISS is constantly losing altitude, necessitating frequent boosts using the Shuttle or a Progress vehicle to keep it on station (pardon the weak pun). A constantly-updated graph of its altitude variations is hosted on Heavens-Above.
Anyway, does anyone know if ion engines of the type used on DS1 would be effective in allowing the ISS to maintain altitude, or could they at least reduce its rate of orbital decay enough to justify the power expenditure?
I admit, this is offtopic, but while I'm thinking about it ...
Ok, Voyager (as in NASA's probe) was brought up (ok it was the focus) in one of the ST movies, but planet launched space probes from other species aren't really ever talked about in StarTrek. Why was warp drive the deciding factor for first contact? Why not "hey they shot a probe hundreds of millions of light years away from their planet, and they're still gathering information from it!"?
I mean, what if Voyager sends us back a picture of something living on another planet? "Hello, we know you're there and we're coming after you." Seems like a good reason to go talk to the people responsible for the craft.
~LoudMusic
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Success indeed, but the point is that space won't be really explored untill it becomes profitable.
:)
If only those old Scrooge McDuck stories about moons made of gold were true
Washington bullets will simply be known as the "Bulle
They should point it out of the solar system and turn the ion drive on. Just let it go...
"Information wants to be paid"
The ion engine is just another Newton's-third-law technology, with the big nuance being that rather than relying on the expansion of hot gases from the burning of fuel to provide the counter-force, the spacecraft uses an electified grid to propel tiny charged ions out the back
Some mail order electronics/science catalogs used to sell little Van Der Graff static generators (you know, the shiny metal ball on a column with a rubber band running up and down) as "Atom Smasher! Demonstrate Ion Space Propulsion!!" (this was about early 1970's, Lafayette catalog) and the ion drive was the ancient static electricity "whirygig" trick, put an 'S' shaped wire with pointed ends on top balanced on a bearing, fire up the generator and it spins from the corona discharge streaming off the pointed ends. However, scaled up to industrial military space size it could be what gets people up to near warp speed some time in the not so distant future.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Much like the russians did, eh? I don't recall any russian Mars colonies...
Considering the Soviets were the ONLY nation that successfully landed a probe on Venus, I wouldn't totally write off their contributions to space exploration.
The difference is, under socialism/communism, you don't have a CHOICE where your money goes. At least in theory, US citizens do. In russia, if you didn't like what the government did, you were shot
Well realistically I (as an individual) don't have any control over what the govement does with my tax money, so (as you say) - this is in theory. You can get shot in the US too if you don't like what the government does. Go run around Area 51 waving your arms around and see if you get shot. You might, you might not - it sort of depends on if the guards are cranky because of bad coffee.
I'm done nit-picking now.