Comet Probes Given New Duties

iamlucky13 writes "In January of 2004, the NASA's Stardust mission made a flyby of comet Wild-2, taking images and collecting samples from its tail that have since been returned to earth in a detachable capsule. On July 4, 2005, Deep Impact smashed a 350 kg projectile traveling 37,000 km/h into comet Tempel 1 as part of its studies of that object. With both craft in good shape at the end of their missions, NASA has been considering additional tasks for the probes. These plans have now been confirmed with a variety of tasks costing an estimated 15% what a new mission would. Among the new duties will be a revisit of Tempel 1, a flyby of comet Boethin, and transit studies of known extra-solar planets."

Comments

This is awesome

[THE anonymus coward]

The ability to reuse a spacecraft like this is great. This is of particular interest to the slashdot community because it is a sweet hack to take seven year old hardware that was designed for a specific mission and with whatever delta-v margin that is left over from the primary mission run a secondary mission. What is more is that we know that these are proven spacecraft that have been running nominally for a long time, so instead of 100% of the cost of a new mission that only may or may not fulfill the science mission, it is 15% of the cost for a known-good spacecraft that is as close to guaranteed to bring back good science.

Maybe I am one of a very small minority on slashdot who gets excited about this stuff...

Three cheers for NASA

[SimonInOz]

You have to hand it to the NASA folks. When they get things to work (and they don't always, Mars was somewhat troublesome) they do give good value.

Those little rovers are STILL going. There were supposed to last about 3 months and they are still plugging along. And one with a limp - so valiant! And as for the Voyagers, I gulp. SO cool.

Yes, they have some horrible bureaucratic problems. Yes, they have some sever political challenges. But credit where credit is due.

Well done chaps.

Re:Three cheers for NASA

[niloroth]

The NASA folks have done absolute wonders with UNMANED missions. The ones with people on board on the other hand...

Here we are reading about expanded missions, the potential for more data than initially thought, the ability to retask a probe on another planet, or out in space, for a uses that no one even thought of when it was launched years before. And we are getting real and useful information from these missions. All without risking a single life, and at fractions of the cost of manned missions.

I realize that i sound like a broken record on this topic, but really, is there anyone left who doesn't think that one of the biggest roadblocks in the way of our learning about other planets and our solar system is the push for manned space exploration? We are putting people in a tin fort at the edge of our atmosphere, and celebrating it as an accomplishment? What is that going to get us at the moment? Can anyone really justify it as fiscally sound, without having to resort to either 1) technology we don't have yet like a space ship to get us to mars, 2) study of the effects of low gravity on humans (hint, it's bad, we know that), 3) or as a staging area for mars? (it won't be)

I am not saying we should never think about going out into space, but now is not the time. Lets work on designing the ships that will take us there, and figuring out how we are going to do it first. Most of that can be done in labs and in virtual reality, only towards the end of the design cycle will we have to go back out there, and i can almost guarantee you we will not need to stop off at the ISS.

Please write your congress people about the need to fund NASA, and the need to not sacrifice good unmanned missions in the face of wasteful and dangerous manned missions.

Re:good

[ushering05401]

I think they are doing the right thing by keeping mission expectations low. Ambitious missions that fail to deliver are seen as failures by shortsighted lawmakers. Toned down missions that outperform look much better.

Most people only follow space exploration at the soundbite level (evening news or whatnot). Hearing that yet another vehicle continues to operate beyond its life expectancy is a good way to create a positive perception of NASA in the general public.

Regards.

Re:good

[CastrTroy]

Same thing goes for just about anything. Don't promise what you can't provide. In my 4th year software engineering project class for university, some students took on monumental projects, and had to scale them back quite a bit to get something finished. The professor actually took this into consideration and many students lost marks because of it. However, the groups that were able to properly scope a project for the resources they had available were given better marks because it showed better planning ability. Vista is seen as a failure because of all the things it didn't provide (Monad shell, WinFS), and because it was way behind schedule. Even though it has some good features, it's seen as a failure because they promised so much that didn't show up in the end.

Re:good

[DerekLyons]

I think nasa should make it standard mission procedure to plan several possible missions for each probe they send.

You can't really do that - as you don't know what kind of shape the probe will be in at the end of it's primary mission. That being said, it's been NASA's tacit policy for years to run their probes until they drop if at all possible.

Re:good

[tjstork]

The problem with this is, the people that start out chasing after the sun and the moon and the stars tend to deliver more than the people that deliver exactly what they promised. I see this in corporate programming all the time. Developers afraid of missing deadlines never take risks, and for that matter, never really push themselves. As a result, the client is actually grotesquely undeserved.

Translated to what we have at NASA or even the DOD today, you have an underpromising risk adverse group of people that still wind up burning through money unnecessarily because they spend it all trying to figure out how to do it all within a precise window. If you look at the sorts of radical research that came about between the 1950s and 1960s, versus what we have today, and I think you'd have to conclude that NASA has utterly lost its nerve. Sometimes you just have to put a guy up on top of a missile to see if it won't blow up. NASA would never do that today, and that is why we have not yet gone back to the moon or to mars.

It's that, they are all a bunch of pussies now, as are most American engineers.

Re:Define "good science"

[vondo]

For 15% of 200 million dollars, you can do a heck of a lot on the ground. That will fund Eight hours in Iraq.

Re:Define "good science"

[afaik_ianal]

And with any of those options you suggest, we could save millions of lives. By your logic, we should be firing every teacher immediately, kill the entire science budget, and prevent everyone from spending money on anything but the bare essentials.

We have gained plenty of knowledge from space exploration. In many people's books, that's enough to make it worthwhile, but we also get to apply that knowledge on the ground.

Re:good

[beckerist]

every part of the mission is tailored specifically for the task at hand
Precisely. NASA's budget is $16.8 Billion (US) and dropping relatively to the strength of the dollar.

Though it seems like a lot of money, compare to ANY other governmental program (consider Welfare at 14% of the US GDP means that almost 2 trillion dollars are spent YEARLY on welfare alone! Now also keep in mind this includes corporate welfare...)

My point being, is that given the scientific, bureaucratic, safety, social, political and engineering requirements that NASA has to adhere to, they are given a VERY strict budget to do it in. Every mission they plan for, they MUST do it on the cheap, and planning for multiple missions? Nah, that's a waste of time AND money that they don't have, because there's still only a slim chance the primary mission will even happen, let alone succeed.