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European Moon Mission Ready for Launch
merryprankster writes "Europe's first mission to the Moon is set for blast off from Kourou in French Guiana just after midnight, local time, on Sunday. SMART
1 will study the composition of lunar rock through X-ray observations. The probe uses a new solar electric propulsion system which converts solar energy its panels into motion via the expulsion of ions. Details at the ESA mission site."
The probe uses a new solar electric propulsion system which converts solar energy its panels into motion via the expulsion of ions.
IMHO that is much more interesting than the mission itself. The less chemical fuel needed to get moving once in space could mean more room for payload.
Beat the weenies to the punch:
I, for one, welcome our new ion propelled masters!
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
Natalie Portman could fly one of these to my house anytime!
The lengths people will go to to hurt the ego of chemical-rocket engineers!
Chemical rockets, 70, found dead in their suburban home, truly an American icon.
Obligatory goatse.cx link.
Trolling is a art,
Why not collaborate with NASA instead of trying to re-invent the wheel?
Because NASA's wheel is square.
... that launched the first Borg!
e.g. "On its long trek through space the cube-shaped probe..."
Because otherwise things like this will happen. Competition is always healthy and there's no point leaving NASA with the monopoly on space travel.
What's so bad about offering another perspective toward the whole of the universe?
Turkeyphant
Sure the Ion drive is a really neat addition, but it's soooo slooooow. It's going to take them 15 MONTHS to get there! And the payload isn't really greater at all. It takes longer to get any large loads going. The US space program got people to the moon and back in what...2 weeks? It may be slightly more economical, but it just doesn't seem practical.
Hopefully they can perfect the ion drive, however through this to increase the speed and payload capacity. Then we might have something really cool... (until the anti-matter reactor comes online...)
---- Move SIG...For great justice!
Because our specific wheel is old and busted. Also we don't look outside the wheel-way of doing things. It was a good wheel for the time it was built. However, we seem to be too fixated on repairing the wheel. There is a whole industry in wheel repair, wheel protocol, wheel contracts etc..
To use your symbolism, instead of building a wheel they are building a sledge - having discovered through wheel-driven exploration Space is covered in snow and bumpy so a sledge is a good option. Yes, the wheel works and is important. But they are under no obligation to bog down thier sledge building team with wheel thinkers.
"new solar electric propulsion system which converts solar energy its panels into motion via the expulsion of ions."
Wouldnt solar powered ion engine be easier to say?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
do you wheely think so?
More players means more ways of doing things. Cooperation can be good -- but so can competition. Competition allows various new technologies and ideas to be tried. A cooperative monopoly can strangle a field.
Possibly the biggest problem with NASA is that it has stifled innovation in the field. When one organization dominates a field the way NASA does, it's difficult to get alternative ways of doing things developed. The dominant group dismisses out of hand any thing they haven't developed. They tend to drive off independently minded people. Problems go unnoticed for longer periods of time.
Many of us welcome competition for NASA -- be it private or governmental. I salute ESA for it's independence -- and for trying out ion propulsion.
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
Why makes oneself reliant on NASA wheels, when one could have a home grown wheel industry with all the spinoff products that it generates.
I hate to burst everyone's bubble, but NASA used ion propulsion on the Deep Space 1 mission several years ago. Yes, cool technology but like most stuff it's been researched for years and used before.
We tried that before. The US doesn't like sharing its technology. The result is that trhe EU would get none of the fringe benefits of developing spacecraft.
We'll know if the USA actually went to the moon or if that was just a hoax, unless this is a hoax as well. I guess this time I can break out my telescope.
The article mentions that it is lightweight, only 367kg but NASA's first lunar orbiter weighted 386kg. So 40 years later we have a 19kg savings and it takes 15 months to get there. I love progress...
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
The SMART 1 is going into Lunar polar orbit with 14 meter solar panels unfurled. With the solar wind push aiding on one side and opposing on the other will the ion engine have enough thrust to counter the effects of the solar wind?
Maybe, if they did half-turns of the solar panels on every orbit they could elongate the orbit enough to break free or perhaps make Earth one of the axis points. ???
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
While it is nice to see ION engines gain more momentum in the industry do they really have a place in short duration/distance missions?
If its passed off a as a proof of concept it would make more sense but the article doesn't imply that.
Considering the limited distance it would probably been more efficient to use an established propulsion system and get the scientific results sooner. Now, because of their choice any findings are unnecessarily delayed.
On a high note, its good to see they are not replicating the work done by the previous NASA probe - seems scienctists are much better at getting along than their governments.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
We just have to give it time. Yeah, right now, ion propulsion isn't the most efficient or fastest way of travel. But given more use, more people will be interested in perfecting it. Remember when solar panels had such low energy converstion rates? They're much better now. I could give a million other examples, but you get my point. We can't rely on the old methods of travel forever.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Yes, ESA is very nationalistic. It consists of many nations... Anyway, who is reinventing what wheel? Should we not test ion propulsion simply because Nasa did it before already? Did it work so badly that we should avoid it?
Wouldn't it just be easier to create a giant trebuchet and hurl the pod into space???? If anything it'd be a nifty Junkyard Wars project :)
IAAP and I can say: Yes space is naturally chock full of radiation. Astronaughts regularly come home having recieved their maximum allowable yearly dosage. In fact, there's a special exemption from these OSHA / DOE guidelines for astronaughts... Uranium is relatively abundant (rare compared to say, iron, but available in LARGE quantities) in the solar system. It stands to reason that there are trace quantities of Plutonium as well.
Solar panels work great when you're this far into the solar system. From Mars and beyond the solar intensity is much lower and solar panels would need to be prohibitively large and heavy to provide the same amount of power as a 45 pound radioisotope thermal generator.
And all of Switzerland will breathe a sigh of relief, as what could have been the single biggest competitor to that lovely wholey Swiss cheese, turns out not to be after all.
Around the same time, HRL demonstrated the first laser. Busy people.
You have to understand that there is more than one reason for using ion engines. Some include, reduced cost, reduced complexity, proving the improved technology really works and extending the mission life. The final one it important, since what usually ends a probe's mission is component failure or more often running out of fuel. As long as there is a star in our Solar system, then SMART 1's mission can last a good while. The only thing that could extend the mission even more is an xenon collector and an extended mission budget.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
From yesterday's article article about Smart 1 at the BBC:
Just another wannabe fantasy novelist...
Solar electric propulsion is hardly new. It's been used for getting communications satellites out to their final geosynchronous orbits for a number of years now, and NASA demonstrated using solar-powered ion engines for interplanetary primary propulsion on Deep Space 1 back in '98.
What ESA is claiming is new about this mission is that they'll be combining ion propulsion with gravity assist maneuvers. AFAIK that hasn't really been done yet (although I know some guys at JPL who're working on it), and given how difficult it can be to work out low-thrust trajectories in the first place I would imagine that successfully throwing gravity assists into the mix would be a significant acheivement.
The reason ion engines are a good thing is because they are so efficient. But they also have their share of problems.
;) I did my senior thesis on a solar electric propulsion Mars mission, and I find it to be far more interesting than most people seem to.
The figure of merit for rocket propulsion is specific impulse (Isp). It is a measure of unit thrust per unit mass of fuel consumed per unit time. Conventional (chemical) propulsion, such as solid rocket boosters, have an Isp in the 200 - 300 range. But they generate many many thousands of kilonewtons of thrust. That's why we use them for launching things out of gravity wells.
Ion engines, on the other hand, have Isps from 2000 - 3500 (though the higher end of that range is only test-stand stuff right now). They, however, produce only millinewtons of thrust, and cannot be used for fast orbit transfers or launches. But they can be made small. Very, very small, with correspondingly small amounts of fuel, which is pure joy for aerospace engineers trying to design robotic missions.
Unfortunately, they are also power-hungry little buggers. A single ion engine can use a kilowatt of power while running...and they must be running all the time to generate enough delta-v to have an effect on the course of a spacecraft. (Delta-v is the measurement of how much of a change in a velocity vector is necessary to effect the desired change in course, and mission designers begrudge every cm/s...every maneuver burns propellant, and there are no gas stations in space.) There are only two ways to get power in space right now: solar cells, and some form of nuclear decay. Only solar cells have a good enough power/mass ratio to run ion engines, and as missions proceed farther out from the Sun, array area must be bigger, which adds mass. It's a tricky balancing act.
For this mission, however, the craft will always be close enough to the sun to generate the power it needs fairly easily. (Except when it's in shadow, but that's why we have storage batteries.)
Ion propulsion is an old technology, incidentally. It's been around in some form or another since the 60's. It's only recently that it became economical, though.
I could go on for pages, but I'm unconvinced anyone wants to see that.
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
Remember, heavy elements are made in supernovae, and elements heavier than Uranium have too short a half life to have lasted long enough to be around. Uranium is only around because it's got an enormously long half life. Radioactive elements lighter than Uranium with short half lives are found in nature only because they decayed from heavier elements with longer half lives. So no, there's no plutonium out there.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Maybe it can take some pictures of that American Flag and the tire tracks while it's up there.
Don't know what good it'd do, since the conspiracy theorists would simply say something about the pictures being covertly doctored by the French government after the the probe landed in order that they might get back in bed with the U.S Government..
They'd get more Fox News airtime, but at least we'd have a few converts.
As long as there is a star in our Solar system, then SMART 1's mission can last a good while
Unfortunately, however, our solar system contains only one star, meaning that solar powered engines lacked redundancy...
(YES, that's a JOKE...)
Life is short: void the warranty.
What exactly is innovative about this mission? It is the same mission as flown by Clementine years ago. Solar electric propulsion is commonplace. Here are some spacecraft that have flow them to date:
I don't think this story is slashdot worthy.
an ill wind that blows no good
It was about time Europe get itself a special effects industry capable of faking lunar missions. The USA perfected this technology in the late sixties and look how profitable the American movie industry is now.
Actually, Ion engines have been used in space since early 90's but primarly as station keeping thrusters for satilites. You are correct that competition is good for NASA, but at this very moment, the Air Force is funding the Ion Space Propulsion Lab where I am currently doing my PhD research.
Are they going to use the same stage sets that were used for the Apollo project? Seems like it would be important to look consistent.
I hope they add some special effects, maybe some living rocks that shoot lasers, or holes in the surface that suck astronauts up in plumes of moon dust.
I love sequels!
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
> Will the European nations be the first to mine the moon?
No - we've all ratified the Ottowa Convention.
I hear they aren't really going, they are just using the USA's sound stage from the last "missions".
--replacning tin foil hat.
NASA used Ion propusion in their Deep Space 1 craft, and used it to take pictures of an asteroid, back in 1998. Maybe new for Europe, but it's been tried and tested already.