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Ulysses Spacecraft on its Last Legs

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the at-the-end-of-the-tour-when-the-road-disappears dept.

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.

4 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Re:D'oh by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  2. Re:D'oh by qw0ntum · · Score: 4, Informative
    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!
    --
    'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
  3. Re:Geniuses by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  4. Awesome! by jgoemat · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.