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Cassini's Primary Mission Ends, Two-Year Extension Begins
wooferhound points out recent news that the Cassini probe has completed its original four-year mission and is beginning a two-year extended mission, which was authorized earlier this year. Cassini's first mission brought us a treasure trove of information about Saturn and its various moons. The new mission will target two of those moons in particular for further study: Titan and Enceladus. Quoting:
"The spacecraft is extremely healthy and carries 12 instruments powered by three radioisotope thermoelectric generators. Data from Cassini's nominal and extended missions could lay the groundwork for possible future missions to Saturn, Titan or Enceladus. [The two moons] are primary targets in the two-year extended mission, dubbed the Cassini Equinox Mission. This time period also will allow for monitoring seasonal effects on Titan and Saturn, exploring new places within Saturn's magnetosphere, and observing the unique ring geometry of the Saturn equinox in August of 2009 when sunlight will pass directly through the plane of the rings."
I suppose they mean that a number of extended missions were proposed and evaluated, and this happens to be the mission that was authorized, beating out the other proposals.
Somehow I doubt that issuing a self-destruct signal was one of the other proposals ;)
Insert self-referential sig here.
There are thousands of things NASA wants to do, but costs keep going up and funding (in real terms) keeps going down. The costs of buying time on the Deep Space Array, renting a control room, paying for the mission specialists with the skills needed, etc, costs a lot more than running tourist centres. The Government doesn't want facts, it wants PR stunts.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Authorized? What exactly would NASA/whomever have talked about when they were deciding this?
The people controlling: the budget for paying the salaries of the technicians supporting the mission, paying for costs of equipment and its upkeep, scheduling of necessary assets on this end of the telemetry chain and a lot of other things.
Ultimately, it's up to the President and Congress as ultimate budget-makers, but I bet it only needed a cursory nod from higher-ups at NASA in this case.
No money means no listening. The people in charge of the Cassini mission can't exactly dig into their own pockets to keep it going ("My uncle has this old deep space radio network, and Bobby's dad has a fully staffed mission control center he's not using...").
Thankfully, it's not that hard to get those controlling the purse strings to spring for additional funding when you can point to what you've already done and tell them the probe is still good to go and that you're still getting outstanding results. There's also the unwritten rule where you more or less can be sure of automatic approval for extension if the probe is still going after the initial "planned" lifetime- the two Mars Rovers a perfect case in point.
Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. With projects that cost as much as these and in outer space this reins more true than ever. Over engineer every thing. That is why I am not surprised when these things last past there expected life span. It means the engineers are doing there job.
sorry for my comments, I'm drunk
The actual timing of that option was after the Voyager program was funded for two 4 year missions (as Mariner 10 and 11). The engineers ensured that the spacecraft were capable of 12 years missions so that the Grand Tour would be an option. The original Grand Tour option was 4 spacecraft with 2 Jupiter-Saturn-Titan flybys and 2 gas giant-ice giant tours (with one potentially being sent directly to Pluto). This was rejected for funding issues (along with the NERVA program) in favor of fully funding the Viking program. The Voyager program after much public outcry ended up with 2 cheaper probes to flyby Jupiter and Saturn with special emphasis on studying Titan. After Voyager 1 survived its cross plane maneuver and flyby of Titan, permission was granted to perform a Grand Tour with Voyager 2.