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Ulysses Spacecraft Not Dead Yet
iminplaya sends in the good news that reports of the death of the Ulysses mission are premature. (We've discussed the impending shutdown of the 17-year-old mission a couple of times this year.) Ulysses is a joint NASA / ESA mission to study the sun from an orbit inclined almost 90 degrees from the ecliptic. From the Planetary Society blog post: "Ulysses is not dead yet. ESA issued a statement in February saying that, as Ulysses' radioisotope thermoelectric generators were running out of power, the spacecraft would likely die some time this year. The actual death blow to the spacecraft was likely to be the freezing of hydrazine fuel in a cold spot in a fuel line. Mission controllers found creative ways to prevent the freezing, but the solution was not a long-term one, and ESA had a ceremonial send-off and wrap-up of the mission in mid-June, announcing that the spacecraft would be shut down on July 1. However, it now appears that announcement was premature. ESA issued a statement on July 3 titled 'Ulysses hanging on valiantly.' And on Wednesday, the [Ulysses mission operations manager indicated] that Ulysses' voyage could actually continue for some time."
At least not until Netcraft confirms it.
And maybe not even then ...
It'll probably return after twenty years or so, Poseidon be damned!
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
You thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever,
But you rode upon a steamer to the violence of the sun.
And the colors of the sea blind your eyes with trembling mermaids,
And you touch the distant beaches with tales of brave Ulysses:
How his naked ears were tortured by the sirens sweetly singing,
For the sparkling waves are calling you to kiss their white laced lips.
And you see a girl's brown body dancing through the turquoise,
And her footprints make you follow where the sky loves the sea.
And when your fingers find her, she drowns you in her body,
Carving deep blue ripples in the tissues of your mind.
The tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers,
And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter.
Her name is Aphrodite and she rides a crimson shell,
And you know you cannot leave her for you touched the distant sands
With tales of brave Ulysses; how his naked ears were tortured
By the sirens sweetly singing.
The tiny purple fishes run lauging through your fingers,
And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter.
Oh for fuck's sake, for the last time on /. IT CAN'T BE DONE.
You think it's like turning your car to make a left hand turn of something?!
Momentum... look it up.
You don't need billion dollar budget programs to achieve amazing science, low cost well thought out missions can do great things. maybe it's the thinking part that has them stumped.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
If it had enough left for that sort of maneuver, it wouldn't be in trouble. Of course, it never had enough fuel to do that. It had just enough to reach a Juipiter fly-by in order to get into a near polar orbit of the Sun.
Ulysses S. Grant died at 8:06 a.m. on Thursday, July 23, 1885, at the age of 63 in Mount McGregor, Saratoga County, New York. His last word was a request, "Hydrazine."
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
How do you plan to arrange that close encounter when its current orbit takes it nowhere near Jupiter, genius?
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Hmm, that reminded me of this movie...
Ezekiel 23:20
Thank you for telling people their idea is stupid. Sometimes they need it, the uneducated louts.
Now, I think NASA is overlooking a completely obvious and fooldproof solution. Problem: they have frozen pipes. They're also near the Sun. A quick flyby of the sun for some warmth, and they're good to go! However, if I remember my science classes correctly, they have to keep the pass under a certain speed, or they run into problems with humpback whales.
How do you plan to arrange that close encounter when its current orbit takes it nowhere near Jupiter, genius?
Move Jupiter then. Mohammed, mountain, mountain, Mohammed. Think outside the box sometime, genius. :)
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The blog article at the Planetary Society website says that Ulysses will encounter Jupiter and be ejected from the solar system. Is this a theoretical possibility, or has a date for this been determined? Ulysses originally encountered Jupiter to fling it out of the ecliptic plane so it could study the sun at high latitudes. Its aphelion is still at Jupiter's orbit. If it encounters Jupiter again, any number of things could happen to it. The statement about it being ejected seems to imply that a specific encounter trajectory is already predicted.
Ulysses will get near Jupiter eventually. Maybe if instead of stating that "its current orbit takes it nowhere near Jupiter" you had tried to prove it by posting orbital elements, you would have seen the flaw in your thinking.
"Eventually" isn't going to help any, if by that time the RTG is cooled down enough so that the hydrazine has frozen to a solid so that the craft can't be manuevered for the fly-by. That would be the flaw in your thinking.
Written over 700 years ago and still brilliant. This is just a small extract:
"O frati", dissi "che per cento milia
perigli siete giunti a l'occidente,
a questa tanto picciola vigilia
d'i nostri sensi ch'è del rimanente,
non vogliate negar l'esperienza,
di retro al sol, del mondo sanza gente.
Considerate la vostra semenza:
fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza''.
Li miei compagni fec'io sì aguti,
con questa orazion picciola, al cammino,
che a pena poscia li avrei ritenuti;
e volta nostra poppa nel mattino,
de' remi facemmo ali al folle volo,
sempre acquistando dal lato mancino.
Tutte le stelle già de l'altro polo
vedea la notte e 'l nostro tanto basso,
che non surgea fuor del marin suolo.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."