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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."
Mass Margins are really tight when a mission is in the planning phase... there are times when a mission can have a follow on mission (e.g. Mars Global Surveyor had a relay antenna so that it could relay data while in orbit around Mars), but for the most part, every part of the mission is tailored specifically for the task at hand. Secondary missions are just that, an after-thought of what could be done with the hardware that is on board. Fortunately, the scientists are creative enough to explore this and come up with some really good ideas on how to use the on board equipment for solid science.
I guess thats all I have to say.
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.
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.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
This is a really great precedent for them to set for the future.
Precedent? Hardly. Voyager 2 was originally only planned to flyby only Jupiter and Saturn. The engineers worked without permission from NASA management to build the spacecraft to be able to do a successful flyby of Uranus and Neptune (the probes had an official specification of their lifetimes of something on the order of 3 years or so). Eventually they were able to convince the management that if Voyager 1 was operating safely in space and was looking like it was going to be able to get a good look at Titan then Voyager 2 could reprogram its trajectory so that it could do the flybys of Uranus and Neptune. It was not possible for the Voyager probes to do the specified flyby of Titan and also visit Uranus and Neptune. If Voyager 1 would have blown up or had a problem in space then Voyager 2 would have done the flyby of Titan.
Though to be honest, I'm not even sure if this mission set the original precedent of mission extensions to check out other stuff.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.