Last Try for CONTOUR probe

Heartbreak writes "According to 'Last Wake-Up Calls to CONTOUR', mission operators at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory will try for the last time to contact whatever is left of NASA's CONTOUR comet probe next week. In case you've forgotten, the probe never checked in after its escape burn in August. A leading theory for the failure is that the solid-fuel booster engine (mostly buried in the body of the probe) exploded near the end of its burn. They will probably never be certain about what happened, since the burn occurred while the probe was out of contact with ground stations. Astronomers later found three objects near the expected course of the probe, presumably its remains. The plan of action for the attempted contact---aim for the biggest piece."

Comments

Any Light Curve Results?

[0x69]

The articles don't mention if anyone's tried to do a light curve (graph optical brightness vs. time) on the 3 pieces. If it was wrecked & broke up, all 3 pieces are probably tumbling at various rates.

Tumbling (of anything without a very smooth shape & coloration) is obvious from a light curve, and it would be a pretty good indicator of "no hope - don't waste your time".

Flip-side, a flat light curve (or an almost-always-flat one) strongly suggests a functioning attitude control system.

Re:Any Light Curve Results?

[WeaponOfChoice]

No offence meant to the hardworking folks at NASA, but the agency does not have a good history of checking this kind of thing in advance. In the time honoured tradition of geeks and eccentrics everywhere the simplest solution is often completely overlooked in favour of something more complex, interesting and likely to fail completely. I am, of course, fully with the aforementioned geeks and eccentrics on this one... the light-curve analysis will probably be trotted out later as a reason for why the attempt failed.

Re:Why are there so few comments here?

[Trane Francks]

Is this probe that unimportant, that even /. geeks have rejected talking about it?

The problem isn't so much the importance of the probe, but that the mission itself is now about clean-up and little more. Assuming that the chances of contacting CONTOUR are somewhere between slim and none, there's not much about which to get excited.

The probe itself -- or, more correctly, the study of comets -- is absolutely significant. Various theories suggest that the very seeds of life itself were brought to earth by way of comet impacts. Being able to get close-up and personal with a comet could prove to be very informative if not enlightening.

The problem with this story is that the communication attempts on the 15th and 17th represent NASA's obligatory "last-ditch efforts" and offer no real new hope.