Ulysses Spacecraft on its Last Legs

doconnor writes "JPL announced that Ulysses' mission will be ending after 17 years. The power generated by the decay of a radioactive isotope has been slowly decreasing. To conserve power its main transmitter was shut off. Unfortunately due to a fault in its power supply it cannot be turned back on. The team plans to continue operating the spacecraft in its reduced capacity, using the alternate S-band transmitter, for as long as they can over the next few weeks." Congratulations to all the geniuses involved in this one.

Comments

Re:D'oh

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:
"- has lasted more than 17 years or almost four times its expected mission lifetime"

Yeah, They only got 4 times the usefullness out their investment as they'd originally hoped to get... They must be furious.

Re:D'oh

[Anonymous Coward]

It did last 4 times its expected lifetime and produced many fascinating results. see the article

Re:D'oh

[Dunbal]

If you had read the article you would know that this originally was intended to be a five year mission, and the spacecraft has been sending us useful data for seventeen years. Yes, they got plenty of of it before transmission was cut off - more than they bargained for.

I know reading articles goes against everything slashdot stands for, but doing it from time to time can make you smarter.

Geniuses

[outlander78]

I'm not sure if the congratulatory statement was sarcastic or sincere, but I hope it was sincere. From the article:

"The joint NASA and European Space Agency Ulysses mission to study the sun and its influence on surrounding space is likely to cease operations in the next few months. The venerable spacecraft, which has lasted more than 17 years or almost four times its expected mission lifetime, is succumbing to the harsh environment of space."

Further on the article states that the lifetime was expected to be five years, so three times, not four, but still, a spacecraft tripling its expected useful life is a strong testament to the skill of its engineers.

Re:Geniuses

[thatskinnyguy]

...so three times, not four, but still, a spacecraft tripling its expected useful life is a strong testament to the skill of its engineers. Our Martian Robotic Geologists' (Spirit and Opportunity) primary mission was only supposed to last 90 days. And they landed in 2004. So that makes them somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 times older than they're supposed to be.

This kinda makes me wonder if NASA and other space agencies purposely over-estimate the useful lives of their spacecraft.

Re:Geniuses

[Mr. Underbridge]

This kinda makes me wonder if NASA and other space agencies purposely over-estimate the useful lives of their spacecraft.

I think it's a testament to how difficult it is to estimate the challenges of space exploration. To me, keeping a vehicle operational on another planet we've never set foot on with no opportunity for maintenance sounds damn hard. Doing that for the first time, I imagine 90 days sounded like a stretch. The fact that they've done it for over 3 years to me is one of the great successes of space exploration.

Re:Geniuses

[JohnSearle]

Further on the article states that the lifetime was expected to be five years, so three times, not four, but still, a spacecraft tripling its expected useful life is a strong testament to the skill of its engineers.

Who exactly makes determines the expected life of these things? Is it the scientists who are working on them? 'Cause if you want to be a glass-half-empty kind of guy, then you could say that it's a poor testament to their ability to predict expectancies, rather than to exceed them.

- John

Re:Geniuses

[solitas]

mod parent Insightful

Re:Geniuses

[Anonymous Coward]

The Engineers Credo:
  How long will it take? Double it, then add in a factor of two for contingency.
  How long will it last? Halve it, then take a factor of two for contingency.
  If it moves, oil it. If it doesn't move, hit it with a hammer 'til it does move, then oil it.

Obligatory Trek Quote

Kirk: "How long to re-fit?"
Scotty: "Eight weeks. But you don't have eight weeks, so I'll do it for you in two."
Kirk: "Do you always multiply your repair estimates by a factor of four?"
Scotty: "How else to maintain my reputation as a miracle worker?"
Kirk: "Your reputation is safe with me."
      -- Star Trek III: The Search For Spock

Re:Geniuses

[Jeff DeMaagd]

This kinda makes me wonder if NASA and other space agencies purposely over-estimate the useful lives of their spacecraft.

It's easy to make such a statement if you didn't know the history of rovers & other landers.

Before the Rovers Spirit & Opportunity, there were NO rovers that lasted 90 days on another planet before dying. The predecessor, Sojourner, lasted 83 days. Before that, I think the record was 56 days. 90 days was a good goal. They thought the solar panels would just get covered with dust. They could have put on dust cleaners, but that has a weight penalty, and they decided to use the weight for science payload. They got lucky when they found they can get cleaned from the wind storms.

Re:Geniuses

[Vellmont]

This kinda makes me wonder if NASA and other space agencies purposely over-estimate the useful lives of their spacecraft.


There's a hidden premise here. The premise is we can know the expected lifetime of something that:

• We never fully get to test each probe in the environment it experiences.
• We've only made (I'm guessing) less than 100 of these probes ever, each of which is very different and experiences very different environments.
• We don't even know exactly the environment each probe is going to experience.
• The technology itself is constantly changing over the last 40-50 years of sending out robotic probes.

Which do you think is more likely?

The engineers all know how long the thing is going to last, but lie about it to make themselves and NASA look good.

or

They really don't know how long it's going to last, but make some very conservative estimates about the above unknowns, to make sure it'll last at least as long as the time frame it's supposed to. Sometimes those guesses turn out to make the thing last a lot longer than it needed to be.

Re:Geniuses

[Dunbal]

INAE, but if you watch Star Trek at all you know that space engineers always leave themselves a huge safety margin because this a) impresses the rest of the crew and b) makes them always right!

It's kinda like your doctor - I'd rather tell you that I want to run some tests because I suspect disease, have you pay for such tests, and then have you breathe a sigh of relief when disease is ruled out than just tell you outright to stop being such a crybaby it's all in your head (except of course when it's pretty damned obviously a psychological problem). What happens with the guy I said was having panic attacks when 6 months later he has a heart attack? This stuff happens. Better to err on the side of caution.

I'm sure engineers have found a way to do that too. If it's 5 years I'm sure it's 5 years MINIMUM. More = bonus points.

Re:Geniuses

[Naatach]

This kinda makes me wonder if NASA and other space agencies purposely over-estimate the useful lives of their spacecraft. It's called CYA. It's a sign of an experienced engineer.

Re:Geniuses

[simcop2387]

If it moves, oil it. If it doesn't move, hit it with a hammer 'til it does move, then oil it. that should be if its supposed to move, otherwise you stick on as much duct tape as possible until it doesn't move.

Re:Geniuses

[v1]

Although this is not a purely NASA project, NASA and every other spacecraft agency severely over-engineer their hardware. Most systems are at least redundant if not double redundant, and they incorporate numerous failsafes, fallbacks, and keep as many options open as possible at all times. If something breaks, unless you have the ability to work around it or fix it remotely, you're done. You can't just send a tech out to fix it.

The rovers on mars almost died when their flash memory filled up, because they did not intend to survive long enough to gather so much data, that the capacity of their flash was deemed more than enough. This alone is good evidence that they aren't really intending for things to run this long, just sometime they do a really good job AND get really lucky. Go read about the Expensive Hardware Lobbing to get an idea of just how easy it is to make a mistake, and how catastrophic such mistakes are. Even with how much care goes into these things, we still don't keep terribly good odds.

I don't know all the reasons the rovers are still running, but I've heard several. The crippling flash space problem was averted because of an automatic reboot, in addition to an automatic failsafe mode, the combination of which allowed them to get in and clear disk space. The rover with the dead wheel, they were able to disengage its motor so it didn't eat up power and drag on the ground (not turning) and that again isn't something you'd necessarily ever expect to need to do, but they added that ability anyway and it paid off. I'd bet there are at least a dozen other "plan ahead" safeties that have saved their bacon too.

From Mariner 2's entry on EHL: On September 8 17:50 UT the spacecraft suddenly lost its attitude control, which was restored by the gyroscopes 3 minutes later. The cause was unknown but may have been a collision with a small object. Then, on November 15, one solar panel failed. However, the probe got within 34,773 km of the planet on December 14 19:59:28.

The odds of it hitting something out in space has to be incredibly slim, but they installed gyroscopes anyway, and as a result were able to continue the mission. You can't really factor that in when trying to calculate the life expectancy of a project like this. All you can do is build it the absolutely best you can, and hope you don't get mugged by too many problems at the same time.

Although the ppl at NASA are certainly skilled, I don't think we can call any of them "experts" at this space exploration thing. They may be the best we've got, but lets face it, there's a lot we still don't know, and we're not able to build experience very quickly. We're total n00bs in space. I don't think we over-estimate anything, we just get lucky now and then. Building in failsafes and options gives us one or two more extra chances sometimes when something we do doesn't work, and that can turn a single 5 year mission into four or five learning experiences before it finally breaks beyond hope, rather than one.

When Mariner 3 failed to eject its heat shield, that one mistake totally screwed the entire mission after a very long wait. Instead of tinkering with various ways to fix the problem remotely with your available options, Game Over. Wait another 5 years and try again. Those are the painful lessons they try to avoid by what is sometimes perceived as over-engineering or under-estimating.

Re:Geniuses

[mbone]

This kinda makes me wonder if NASA and other space agencies purposely over-estimate the useful lives of their spacecraft.

I have been involved with space flight projects, and you always hope that they last "forever." However, that scares program offices and the budget types. So, you specify a short, sweet, do-able missions, get money for that, and, if you are successful, hope that you can get money to extend it. If you are not successful, well, then it didn't really matter, did it ?

Re:Geniuses

[MBCook]

What about the Lunakhod rovers? Lunakhod 1 lasted 322 earth days, Lunakhod 2 lasted 4 months.

Re:Geniuses

[Adambomb]

Personally I wouldn't even try to compare lunar rovers to planetary rovers, as an environment of extremely predictable temperature, no weather or atmosphere, is definitely a lot easier to work with than even slight amounts of atmosphere and weather (as shown by the martian dust storms, and say, trying to get through venus' cloud layer).

Re:Geniuses

[FlyingGuy]

Hey genius, don't you mean, under estimate?

That aside, lets take the problem straight on and consider the mars rovers. You are the engineer. You don't have anything remotely resembling a clue as the abrasive qualities or the dirt and dust on Mars. You have an inkling of a clue about wind and such, but Martian surface weather is still a pretty big mystery. You have to build a device that is mobile, must supply power to all kinds of instruments, it has to communicate to a orbiting platform that is not in constant communication range, it has to deal with wild temperature variations, it has to survive the violence of being shot into orbit, then survive the cold of interplanetary space on its way to Mars, then survive being bounced across the surface of Mars in what is essentially a huge beach ball, then be able to warm up, unfold and start driving around...

And you suspect the engineers might be hedging their bets just a teeny bit? Ya think!

Re:Geniuses

[Teun]

You must be a public servant or lawyer/ accountant.

Re:Geniuses

[Bad D.N.A.]

Who exactly makes determines the expected life of these things?

Nobody makes a determination of the expected life, absolutely nobody.

It's all about a requirement for how long it HAS to last, not how long it WILL last.

If you start a mission with a requirement that it has to last 20 years, you will never be able to afford that mission. If you start the exact same mission with a requirement that it has to last 2 years, then you have a chance. The possible lifetime is always something people think about, and people always do there best to maximize that, but it's not a requirement.

Re:Geniuses

[Tablizer]

This kinda makes me wonder if NASA and other space agencies purposely over-estimate the useful lives of their spacecraft.

It appears that if the craft survives the initial launch and landing (if there is one), then lifetimes often exceed expectations. Thus, the average estimated lifetime is sort of distorted by initial problems during launch and landing. It is kind of like how infant deaths distort average human lifespan statistics such that they usually exclude them.

Further, various instruments seem to be rated for about an 80-percentile. For example, Spirit's wheels were designed for an 80-chance of lasting 3 months (I don't know the exact contract). And, it is true that various parts of Spirit starting failing after 3 months: the front wheel started sticking and the grinder's diamond surface wore off, making it nearly useless. Thus, the chance of most of the instruments lasting past the lifetime estimate is fairly high (assuming critical non-redundant systems don't fail).

Re:Geniuses

[NotBorg]

This kinda makes me wonder if NASA and other space agencies purposely over-estimate the useful lives of their spacecraft.

Kirk: "Do you always multiply your repair estimates by a factor of four?"
Scotty: "How else to maintain my reputation as a miracle worker?"

Re:Geniuses

[Tiger4]

or

Sometimes you get the Pounds and Ounces and Newtons and Pascals confused.

As the Air Force loudly proclaims, "We live in fame or go down in flame"

Usually they get it right, but when they screw up...

Re:Geniuses

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure if the congratulatory statement was sarcastic or sincere, but I hope it was sincere.

> Following an in-depth analysis of the aforementioned sentence (which will form a substantial part of my PhD in Wit) I strongly suspect that sarcasm was intended. I must therefore re-iterate to the /. community that CmdrTaco is indeed A WANKER for posting such crap.

Re:Geniuses

[AJWM]

Predictable doesn't mean easy. Lunar temperatures have something like a +/- 250 degree temperature range between day and night, and the day/night cycles are 2 weeks long each, meaning your rover gets really hot soaked alternating with really cold soaked. Martian day/night temperatures are not so extreme, and the days/nights are only about 12-1/4 hours long each. The atmosphere helps moderate the temperature.

Sure, Mars has winds where Luna doesn't, but given the thin atmosphere, it's not like you have to worry about them blowing the rover away or anything. As it turned out, they were just right to blow accumulated dust off the solar panels. Yes, the wind means dust might be more likely to get into the mechanisms, but at least it's smooth rounded dust. Lunar dust is jagged fractal surfaces all the way down, highly abrasive; the saving grace is that it only gets kicked up by your wheels spinning or a nearby impact. (That's another difference -- the Martian atmosphere is enough that you don't have to worry about micrometeorite impacts, which you do on the Moon.)

Venus is of course a different question; nobody's gotten a Venus-lander to last for more than a few hours. The surface temperature is twice as hot as a pizza oven (hotter, in fact, than Mercury's surface), and the pressure is about the same as 3000 feet underwater.

Re:Geniuses

[NoSpamPlease]

The rovers on mars almost died when their flash memory filled up, because they did not intend to survive long enough to gather so much data, that the capacity of their flash was deemed more than enough.

That's not an accurate representation of what happened. I think you are confusing Bill Gates with the MER crew. JPL never designs a spacecraft with 'more memory than it will ever use' because that's just not possible (you can't launch the weight of that much memory). In fact, all missions have to be designed to delete data as the mission goes, but sometimes things go wrong.

If you want to read a description of the underlying issues and see how JPL responds to anomalies check MER Spirit Flash Memory Anomaly [PDF,NASA,JPL].

Re:Geniuses

[Adambomb]

Touche, I wasnt thinking of the other dangers we DO have when there is no atmosphere present =).

Re:Geniuses

[celtic_hackr]

Don't forget Venus's atmosphere is toxic acids including sulfuric and nitric acids. The windows in the lander sent to Venus were manufactured diamond. Still, it is inevitable that any lander there would quickly be eaten by the acids in the atmosphere. The fact that Ulysses survived 17 years in space with high radiation, at almost absolute zero and probably many micro-meteorite collisions is to be congratulated. How many 17 year old cars do you see that have never seen the inside of a repair shop? How many 17 year old electromechanical machines of any complex design have you ever known to not have needed repair of some kind? This is a machine with an onboard computer, communications, cameras, motors, engines, etc. So some parts are finally starting to fail, and they happen to be critical components.

If I could I'd mod the article as flamebait.

Re:Geniuses

[turing_m]

"if you want to be a glass-half-empty kind of guy, then you could say that it's a poor testament to their ability to predict expectancies, rather than to exceed them."

Except for the fact that there is a good deal of statistical uncertainty involved with predicting part failure. Two identically manufactured bearings will rarely ever fail at the same exact time. You might draw a dud or you might draw a super-bearing. The same way as a given atom of carbon-14 might decay in one millisecond or in a billion years time.

There is also a small possibility that their design was flawed but they just got lucky with the parts, construction, modes of operation required and the particular inputs applied to their system. Remote, but possible. This is all related to the single event nature of the spacecraft. If they had sent up 30+ Ulysses, we'd be able to discount the "flawed but lucky" possibility.

Re:Geniuses

[Yvanhoe]

This kinda makes me wonder if NASA and other space agencies purposely over-estimate the useful lives of their spacecraft. Two words : factory specifications.
You know that this electric engine designed to work between 2V and 10V will still be working well under 15V and will only begin to make strange noises and smoke around 30...

Re:Geniuses

[MichaelSmith]

Sojourner, lasted 83 days.

Pathfinder lasted 83 days. Sojourner could still be operating as far as we know.

Re:Geniuses

[Benaiah]

Engineering is efficiency. We don't typically have the luxury of overdesign.
If you are told to build a mine to last 5 years and it lasts 17, the valuable ore would have been depleted long ago and the owner will complain that he paid too much because you overdesigned everything.

Re:Geniuses

[Jeff DeMaagd]

You're right, I screwed that up.

Re:Geniuses

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Pathfinder lasted 83 days. Sojourner could still be operating as far as we know.

I suppose that's a valid point, maybe not much is known about the actual fault, but I really doubt the rover is still operating.

Re:Geniuses

[Adambomb]

Heh, proof positive of how bent it must be to browse slashdot at >0, or even -1 eh? I do not get how i keep getting modded up well AFTER you properly shot my argument right to hell heh.

Re:Geniuses

[AJWM]

Well, you were right that the environment on the Moon is more predictable than Mars. I just pointed out that predictable and easy aren't necessarily synonymous. In some ways they could be, others not.

But I've long given up trying to predict what moderators will do -- I've had stuff +4 insightful and -1 troll, obviously that post ticked off somebody with mod points.

Re:Geniuses

[instarx]

The engineers all know how long the thing is going to last, but lie about it to make themselves and NASA look good.[?]
You meant that to be your absurd choice, but I think it is actually the way it is - they underestimate the life-expectancy to make themselves look good; but it isn't the engineers, its the administrators. I think it is obvious that they set ridiculously low estimates so they can define the mission as successful as quickly as possible - thier future funding depends on it.

Its clear that they take the minimum lifetime of every single component, multiply them together to get a very low lifetime for the craft, and then claim that number for it's design lifetime (presumably because all the components were spec'd to those levels). What would be more honest would be a range - from the lowest estimate to the highest, or even one using MTBF values. I'll also argue it would be better for NASA to give a range. An expected lifetime of "between 3 months and 5 years" would highlight the extreme difficulty of designing these craft.

What would be even more honest would be a definition of success that was mission-related, not time-related. It would be a success in anyone's book if your craft discovered water on the moon in five minutes even if the thing conked out after half an hour.

Re:Geniuses

[instarx]

The odds of it hitting something out in space has to be incredibly slim, but they installed gyroscopes anyway, and as a result were able to continue the mission.

That argument, and to a lesser extent your argument about the reprogramming capability of the Mar's Rovers, is falacious. The gyroscopes on Mariner were there to keep the spacecraft antennae oriented toward Earth. They were a necessary part of the mission, and were NOT installed on the off-chance that Mariner would hit something in space. The reboot and reprogramming abilities of the on-board computers in the Rovers was also a necessary part of the mission. That ability was needed to change the behavior of the craft if something interesting came up or there was some unexpected environmental issues that needed a work-around. They were NOT there solely in case some internal computer glitch unexpectedly developed.

Re:Geniuses

[Anonymous Coward]

people always do there best

"their".

Re:D'oh

[quanticle]

They got 17 years of science out of it. This spacecraft lasted more than 4 times its intended lifetime, and was the first spacecraft to go out of the plane of orbit shared by the planets. Yeah, I'd say they got something out of the project before the batteries died.

Re:D'oh

[qw0ntum]

Damn bro, this spacecraft has been collecting valuable science for SEVENTEEN YEARS. I suppose you didn't bother to read the article - let's review a few quotes.

The reams of data Ulysses returned have forever changed the way scientists view our star and its effects.

"I never dared think that we would be receiving invaluable science data on a near continuous basis for more than 17 years. Ulysses has set the bar on solar science data collection quite high."

"The data and science output of this mission truly deserves to be named after the legendary explorer in Greek mythology," said Arik Posner, Ulysses program scientist...

"We will squeeze the very last drops of science out of it that we can," Marsden said. "Ulysses is a terrific old workhorse. It has produced great science and lasted much longer than we ever thought it would." I'm not sure I'd characterize this amazing mission and spacecraft as a "giant hunk of metal". What an amazing success, to have this spacecraft functioning so well for so long!

Re:D'oh

[CSMatt]

Damn. I've got to do that more often. My mistake.

Power decrease

[Anonymous Coward]

...decay of a radioactive isotope has been slowly decreasing

isn't that what radioactive isotopes do?

Re:Power decrease

[Lally Singh]

Yeah, that part was expected. But they thought they could turn the main transmitter back on. That part's broke.

Re:Power decrease

[Dunbal]

But they thought they could turn the main transmitter back on. That part's broke.

60 watts should be enough for anybody.

Re:D'oh

[Kjella]

I can only imagine the fit NASA had when they found this out. Millions of dollars for what is now a giant hunk of metal. I sure hope they got something out of the project before transmission was cut off. Did you read the first sentence in the summary about "after 17 years"? They've gotten all they were supposed to get out of it and much, much more. This was a last-ditch effort to having it work in a semi-reduced capacity for another two years rather than die now. It is dying because the power source is dying, which is pretty much the limit for how long something can operate even if everything else keeps working normally (which was also why the Mars rovers were supposed to die - no power). The only real permanent source of power out there would be solar power, but having great solar sails brings more than enough problems on its own. Plus we're continously improving technology so new and improved probes probably can do more than trying to keep old probes running longer. That's probably more an issue for say satellites around earth, which also eventually run out of maneuvering fuel.

Lots of PhDs Awarded

[quanticle]

If you go to the publications page for Ulysses, you'll see that about 60 PhDs have been awarded for Ulysses research, in addition to vast numbers of research papers and other article. By any count, this mission has been a success. Congratulations to all involved.

17 years is a long time, Ulysses

[Sodki]

Penelope's gonna be mad when you return to Ithaca. According to the prophecy, you should have returned from Troy seven years ago!

Re:17 years is a long time, Ulysses

[portforward]

Oh brother, where art thou?

5 year mission

[tomhudson]

you would know that this originally was intended to be a five year mission

Don't look at me - I'm still p*ssed off that the Enterprise's original 5-year mission got cancelled after 3 years, you ignorant clod!

17 years ... I can just see it now. Imagine how fat Shatner would have been by the series end? Oh, we don't have to imagine ... but he'd still be getting all the green chicks ...

And Dr. McCoy could have actually said "I'm dead, Jim!"

Radioactivity lasts forever

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been reading "People" magazine and USA Today and the main point they say is that we cannot build more nuclear plants because radioactivity lasts forever. So this 17 years thing is just baloney.
Probably another excuse so the US can shoot it down

Re:Radioactivity lasts forever

[calebt3]

These power sources need isotopes with a low half-life (decades rather than millenia) in order to generate enough heat to be converted to electricity. What comes out of power plants has a much longer half-life so in not suitable for use in these craft. As for your second point, it is way too far away to attempt to shoot "down" (blow up is a better term, since it is nowhere near any planets to fall towards) Why would they want to destroy it, anyways? It carries no classified data and it's likely to cause any trouble. It's not going to crash into Earth and spread radioactivity. It's not going to be a hazard to other satellites. The plan is to just stop trying to talk to it in two years. (You did notice that the mission isn't being discontinued for two more years, right?)

Congratulations

[Zarf]

Congratulations to all the geniuses involved in this one. Indeed, it was monumental and all those geniuses should have their names go down in history as a matter of American pride.

Re:Congratulations

[ZeroExistenZ]

should have their names go down in history as a matter of American pride.

I thought to read: The joint NASA and European Space Agency Ulysses mission
And as well:

"We expect certain parts of the spacecraft to reach 2 degrees Celsius pretty soon," said Richard Marsden, ESA project scientist and mission manage.

You can feel "American pride", but it makes you look stupid when it's misplaced.

Re:Congratulations

[Teun]

all those geniuses should have their names go down in history as a matter of American pride. Quote from the NASA Ulyssis page: "ESA-built Ulysses spacecraft to explore polar regions of Sun"
http://www.esa.int/science/ulysses
And I'm sure ESA is very grateful for the launch from a NASA shuttle.

Re:Congratulations

[pimpimpim]

Ulysses is a joint ESA/NASA mission. ESA manages the mission operations and provided the spacecraft, built by Dornier Systems, Germany (now Astrium). NASA provided the Space Shuttle Discovery for launch and the inertial upper stage and payload-assist module to put Ulysses in its correct orbit. NASA also provided the radioisotope thermoelectric generator which powers the spacecraft and payload.

A combined international effort combining the work from different cultures with their different approaches is no easy task and indeed something to be proud of.

Besides: if I were an american, I should be ashamed about the recent buget cuts for the NSF and the sickening costs of the Iraq war. Pride is not about putting images of your flag on everything and shooting innocent civilians in foreign countries, but about taking care of your people and their rights and education and making sure you are a leading civilization who is able to use diplomacy to create a good network with the rest of the world, instead of muscle-rolling. Just noting.

Re:Congratulations

[Zarf]

You can feel "American pride", but it makes you look stupid when it's misplaced. All sarcasm aside. There were still Americans involved... and as a rule of thumb Americans celebrate drug-dealers that survive drive-by-shootings and then rap about it more. That is truly shameful. Or, should I take it you think that the European Space Agency should take no pride in this either?

Re:Congratulations

[Zarf]

And I'm sure ESA is very grateful for the launch from a NASA shuttle. Okay, you got me. oops. Americans suck. I suck. We all suck and all we can do is invade other countries and take their accomplishments as our own.

Re:Congratulations

[Dusty]

NASA also provided the Radio Isotope Generator. Almost all of the data from the Spacecraft comes via NASA's Deep Space Network, rather than via ESTRACK.

Sarcasm Is Not Recommended.

[cupofjoe]

I'd like to hope that the "geniuses" comment featured in the article post, but I honestly can't tell. I think some of the previous posts point out, better than I can, how unseemly sarcasm would be in this case.

For information on how successful the Ulysses mission has actually been, including its recent historic third pass over the north solar pole, Please refer to the Ulysses home page at JPL:

http://ulysses.jpl.nasa.gov/

In any case, I'd like, perhaps, to suggest that the article post could either have been written, or otherwise reviewed, with more editorial skill. Then again, maybe that's asking too much. And that statement was not intended to be sarcastic.

Cheers,
--joe.

Solar Polar Mission

[mbone]

The mission of Ulysses was to use a Jupiter gravity assist to go out of the plane of the solar system, and
thus observe the Sun from high solar latitudes. It fulfilled that mission and lasted long enough to observe both
the North and South poles of the Sun. I would say it was fully successful.

It is not uncommon for the death of old spacecraft to be messy or even sloppy - the Viking 1 lander was killed by a programming bug -
but that does not detract from their earlier successes.

Re:Solar Polar Mission

[danger42]

>It is not uncommon for the death of old spacecraft to be messy or even sloppy

Yeah, and we all know what happened to Veeger (VGR), too.

Re:D'oh

[a_nonamiss]

Millions of dollars for what is now a giant hunk of metal. I sure hope they got something out of the project before transmission was cut off. Hell yeah! Preach it brother! Reminds me of those two hunks of junk they shot up to Mars. I mean, those $820 million tin cans aren't even 5 years old yet, and they're barely running. What a waste of money! My car only cost $15000, and it's been running for 15 years. Someone at NASA really deserves to be fired over these blatant wastes of money.

[/sarcasm]

Re:D'oh

[Tiger4]

"4 times the usefulness" is a bit of NASA doublespeak. They plan a mission in terms of Primary Mission and Extended Mission. Primary Mission is based on the bare minimum, critical science measurements that should or must be taken in order to make the mission worthwhile. The same sort of thinking that goes, "if the house were on fire, what things would I grab on my way out the door?". The time of the mission and engineering of the spacecraft is set around guaranteeing this stuff happens. As you might expect, this results in extreme overdesign in some respects, which leads to: The Extended Mission. The Extended Mission is all the things you want to do AFTER the Primary goals have been hit. They get prioritized and executed in phases over an Extended time. This is more like, "a flood will probably hit the house in two to three days. What should I move out, just in case, and what should go first?"

your first mistake

[DaveAtFraud]

Your first mistake was in assuming that a slashdot editor would actually RTFA. On the other hand, it makes me feel better that the editors do the same thing I do when it comes to commenting on articles they haven't read.

Cheers,
Dave

Re:D'oh

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no. It's more like buying a$ 71M car with the expectation of driving it for 5 years, then driving it for 20. Use a pre-established analogy!

abuah?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when do spacecraft have legs?? Or is this one of those things that would have been explained if I had RTFA, or even TFS for that matter...

Kudos to the Ulysses team

[element-o.p.]

I've got to say that I am blown away by this. Look at it in these terms: where I work, we are really proud of the fact that we've got a router that has an uptime of something like 2 1/2 years. It's in a data center in a very remote village in Alaska -- the only way in is via airplane. However, it is reachable, it's in a more or less climate-controlled environment and it has (relatively) stable power.

By contrast, Ulysses is traveling in one of the most hostile environments we can imagine. Everything in the shade is approaching -400F (IIRC) while everything on the side facing the sun is getting blasted with the full fury of solar radiation. There's no way to reach it for maintenance. It's technology is 17 years old now. It has no protection other than its own skin from any micro-meteors it encounters. And it has been running continuously since it was launched. You've gotta admit that's an impressive feat. Yeah, I'd say the NASA engineers responsible for Ulysses are 1) definitely geniuses, and 2) very deserving of congratulations.

Re:Kudos to the Ulysses team

[Helevius]

If you have a router with 2 1/2 years of uptime there's a good chance you're not the only person with administrator access now.

Re:Kudos to the Ulysses team

[tokul]

Everything in the shade is approaching -400F (IIRC)

0 K is -459.67 F

Satellites lasting a very long time in space

[Cinnaman]

It's amazing how long they last without the effects of gravity and an atmosphere with dust and oxygen etc.
Although maybe they're just rugged, the Mars rovers have lasted a long time on the surface of Mars.

And it's journey's just beginning

[Phat_Tony]

Ulysses may have done a great job studying the sun, and may think it's hard work is over. But I suspect Ulysses is going to have a long and difficult 10-year journey home, for which it will eventually become better known than for its actual work it went out there for.

Watch out other NASA satellites (I'm looking at you, Cassini): I'd advise not making any moves on Penelope.

Re:D'oh

[Idiomatick]

No, Its more like saying it canny be done capn i'll need at least 3months at dock to repair the damage to the front ... *insert mumbo jumbo*. Then doing it in 3hours while piss drunk.

Re:D'oh

[sjames]

4 times the usefulness" is a bit of NASA doublespeak.

However, in this case, it really is on the tail end of the extended mission. The reason they wanted to shut the xband transmitter off was that the isotope generator is winding down. The output of the isotope generator is quite predictable. That is, they KNEW it would be out of energy by now. Had they been able to toggle the xband transmitter and divert energy as planned, it would have bought a second extended mission of about 2 years. NASA has done a pretty good job w/ Ulysses.

Meanwhile, given the extreme hostility of space and the complete impossability of making repairs once launched, the practice of overdesign for the primary mission is justifiable. The extended secondary mission is the simple practicality of if it's still working, might as well enjoy it.

Re:D'oh

[sjames]

In space, even solar power is far from perminant. Over time, solar cells are destroyed by particle radiation. A solar sail will gradually be filled with pinholes degrading it's performance until it finally falls apart.

And here's how it all begins

[StarfishOne]

STS-41 Launch: ESA Ulysses Oct. 6, 1990
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqmYWgivsHw

Thank you Ulysses!

Sarcasm meter

[Shadow-isoHunt]

Is it me, or is everyone's sarcasm meter broken and pointing in the wrong direction? On the plus side, the pessimism meter's working.

Re:D'oh

[dissy]

I can only imagine the fit NASA had when they found this out. Millions of dollars for what is now a giant hunk of metal. I sure hope they got something out of the project before transmission was cut off. Why hope, when you can read and know for sure?

Oh, wait, slashdot... my bad, carry on

Re:D'oh

[Tablizer]

If you had read the article you would know that this originally was intended to be a five year mission,

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
A tale of a successful trip
That started from a tropic space-port
Aboard this tiny ship.

The console-mate was a mighty science man,
The project manager brave and sure.
Seven instruments set sail that day
For a five year tour, a five year tour.

The sun's plasma started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed,
If not for the courage of the fearless controllers
Ulysses would be lost, the Ulysses would be lost.

the green chicks

[Anonymous Coward]

They turn that way after the kiss him.

Look at me still talking when there's science todo

[tm2b]

This was a triumph.
I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS!
It's hard to over state my satisfaction.

Re:D'oh

[Armakuni]

Yeah! And can you imagine how many days in Iraq those millions might have bought us? Like almost a week?

Awesome!

[jgoemat]

Their site is amazing! It shows all of the instruments and links to the data they've provided directly. For instance, the DUST instrument measures dust impact events (imagine that). You can use the heliocentric latitude and longitude for these thousands of events to track the spacecraft position throughout it's 17 year journey. A nice readme file explains the structure of the data file. That's just one of the 12 scientific instruments. Very cool stuff...

On another note, why are people saying four times as long as they expected? 17 years is closer to three times the original five years than four. You can't really say it's lasted four times as long as expected until after it has lasted 20 years.

Re:Awesome!

[couchslug]

"Ulysses represents what mankind can do when it puts aside its petty differences and works for the betterment of all."

No.
It is a triumph of the American Military Industrial Complex, just like the Internet.

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, No it was built by the ESA, Not NASA. NASA did launch it though. NASA was supposed to build there own OOE (Out-Of-The-Ecliptic) space craft to fly under the sun while Ulysses was flying over the sun. Budget cuts got the better of it.

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

throughout it's 17 year

"its 17-year".

Ulysses is beautiful

[caffiend666]

For those that havn't seen pictures, Ulysses is one of the most beautiful spacecraft ever built. Some future archeologist will love getting this for their museum: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Ulysses_spacecraft.jpg

Covered mostly in gold and other types of metals, the craft looks more like something out of a movie than a real craft.

Re:Ulysses is beautiful

[tcolberg]

The difference of fate between our dark and shiny spacecraft is a rather sad one. All the probes destined to stay within the inner solar system are covered with reflective material to shield them from the radiation. The probes sent outwards are painted black to absorb as much radiation they can to stay warm. Though humans will hopefully be able to visit Ulysses again at some point in the distant future, as long as it's controllers put it in a stable orbit before they lose contact, Voyager 2 is likely to never be seen again. Even if humans developed the technology to travel as far as Voyager has gone, it will likely be so cold and dark that we wouldn't be able to find it.

I hope that humans will eventually develop the ability to go visit our long deceased robotic explorers, I'm just lamenting how some of our greatest ones will likely never be seen again. ::pours out a bit of beer::

Re:Ulysses is beautiful

[instarx]

For those that havn't seen pictures, Ulysses is one of the most beautiful spacecraft ever built. Some future archeologist will love getting this for their museum: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Ulysses_spacecraft.jpg

Well it certainly is shiney, but I'm not sure I can go along with it being "one of the most beautiful spacecraft ever built". It reminds me of the Larson cartoon of the baby warthog asking it's mother: "Mama, am I pretty?"

Re:Ulysses is beautiful

[caffiend666]

OK, which spacecraft do you consider beautiful? Most are more functional than aesthetically pleasing.

Re:Ulysses is beautiful

[instarx]

OK, which spacecraft do you consider beautiful? Most are more functional than aesthetically pleasing./i>

I certainly don't know them all and I only knew Ulysses from the link you provided, so the only beautiful spacecraft I can name off the top of my head was Sputnik.

As for Ulysses - it looks an awfull lot like a commercial air conditioner with a wok glued to it to me. Mama, does this wok on my head make me pretty? :-)

Re:Ulysses is beautiful

[Anonymous Coward]

as long as it's controllers put it

"its".

Re:D'oh

[Anonymous Coward]

Hang your head in shame, dude. It's over.

Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is truly an awesome feat! Ulysses represents what mankind can do when it puts aside its petty differences and works for the betterment of all.

Now, let's shoot it down before the Chinese do!

Re:Look at me still talking when there's science t

[StellarFury]

Switching the transmitter off was just NASA's way of telling Ulysses that the cake is a lie.

My newest pickup line:

[MrMaverick092588]

C'mon back to my place baby, I last longer than the Ulysses spacecraft...

Oblig

[PPH]

In Soviet Russia, your work assignment is extended to 17 years.

Shoot it down!

[HeavyDevelopment]

I for one suggest more target practice.

A Failing Satellite?!!

[Anonymous Coward]

HIT It with a MISSLE!!

YeeeeHAW

Overestimate? No, maybe underestimate

[Anonymous Coward]

"This kinda makes me wonder if NASA and other space agencies purposely over-estimate the useful lives of their spacecraft."

If they were purposefully overestimating the useful lives then the spacecraft would be running a shorter time than they said. They *may* be underestimating the times on purpose, but it is notoriously difficult to estimate the lifespan for something that can not (easily) be tested in the environment that it is going to be used in. ;-)

Save It

[ChrisMaple]

Any chance the some of the remaining fuel can be used to change the trajectory to go closer to the sun, perhaps extending the life a bit more?

Re:Save It

[MichaelSmith]

Any chance the some of the remaining fuel can be used to change the trajectory to go closer to the sun, perhaps extending the life a bit more?

No because (a) the only remaining fuel is used for attitude control. It can't do anything significant about the trajectory and (b) Ulysses is not solar powered. It uses a Radioisotope Thermal Generator which is just running out of power.

Re:D'oh

[dave87656]

Still seems like it was a bargain, in terms of scientific gain over cost.

Irony?

[argStyopa]

Is it just me, or is it highly ironic that the Ulysses spacecraft (to study the sun) didn't use SOLAR power?

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps slightly ironic. But the probe orbits at about the same distance from the sun as Jupiter because it needed a gravity assist from the big boy to swing out into a polar orbit. Solar is at best marginally feasible at that distance.

NASA's Failure

[rotenberry]

Ulysses is a great success, but let us look at its history a bit before we praise NASA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(spacecraft)

Ulysses was originally part of the International Solar Polar Mission (ISPM) where two spacecraft were to pass over the North and South poles of the Sun simultaneously. In 1981, NASA backed out. There would only be one ISPM spacecraft. I was at the Jet Propulsion Lab then, and while the NASA scientists and engineers were disappointed, the Europeans were well and truly pissed. Simultaneous polar measurements are what was used to sell the mission to the governments.

ESA built the spacecraft (designed in the 70s), but the launch from the shuttle was delayed until 1990 by the Challenger disaster. A generation of European space scientists who expected to use the (now renamed) Ulysses data lost out.

Let us instead praise ESA and the European space scientists for this mission.

Re:NASA's Failure

[Zarf]

Let us instead praise ESA and the European space scientists for this mission. I agree. It was very misleading to read the article on the NASA page and read the announcement from the JPL. How silly. It is also silly to interpret the one comment tagged on the end of the article by the Slashdot editor as sarcastic. It was clearly meant to praise the geniuses involved in the mission no matter what their national origin... and I happen think the folks that help change the course of human history by advancing our understanding of the universe don't really get their fair due no matter where they come from.

Re:NASA's Failure

[DarenN]

The truly impressive part is that the Ulysses probe managed to get a look at both poles. I don't know if this fulfilled the original mission parameter, but it was well cool

Re:D'oh

[LinuxLuver]

The Germans who built Ulysses for the ESA can be proud of their work. Over-design and system redundancy would be essential features of any craft that can't be accessed and repaired.

Solar power ...?

[Ralconte]

Wow. It obits the sun, but can't get enough power from solar panels. That's kinda sad, says something about the feasibility of solar power, for terrestrial budget applications, compared to JPL's application with no adverse weather to block the sun, and presumably, the very best, most efficient cells. Curious idea, one end of the probe in constant sunlight, the other end in constant cold of space, heat pump anyone?

Re:Solar power ...?

[Dusty]

Solar power doesn't work too well, once you get outside the orbit of Mars. Unfortunately, Ulysses needs more power for heating the further it gets away from the Sun, which is when solar power delivers less power.

It's difficult to keep one end in the dark and the other in the light, as Ulysses is spin stabilised, and keeps the high gain antenna pointed at the earth. The Radio Isotope Generator uses thermocouples to generate power from a heat difference.

Re:Solar power ...?

[Ralconte]

I see, so it's a solar probe, yet far from the sun, oh well.

Re:Solar power ...?

[Dusty]

The closest it got to the Sun was when it was built on earth (1 AU). After launch and the Jupiter swing by, the closest it gets to the Sun (perihelion) is 1.4 AU. It then heads back out towards the orbit of Jupiter at @5 AU. The unique part of Ulysses orbit, is that is out of the ecliptic plane, allowing the craft to look at the Sun's poles.

Mission extensions added huge value

[Anonymous Coward]

Ulysses was important because it was the first spacecraft dedicated to studying the sun from it's poles, and indeed, at all latitudes. This may seem trivial, but conditions genuinely are different there than at the equator. As far as I know, Ulysses is the only spacecraft to have ever been launched into a polar orbit about the sun. As an added bonus, Ulysses has a gamma ray spectrometer that has been useful in helping scientists determine the approximate origin of distant gamma ray bursts. Direction finding of GRB's is almost impossible because they go straight through mirrors and dishes. Since it is out of plane with other similarly equipped spacecraft, it can help with 3-D triangulation of GRB's.

The mission extensions were a double bonus, because they allowed Ulysses to study the sun over a complete 11 year cycle.

Lest credit be missed, Ulysses was a joint mission between ESA and NASA.

Re: NASA???

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA has done a pretty good job w/ Ulysses.

Considering that it was an ESA-built and -operated probe (although NASA launched it), I would say that you (and others) are kudoing the wrong agency.

Re:D'oh

[Anonymous Coward]

far from perminant

"permanent".

degrading it's performance

"its".