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NASA Universe-Watching Satellite Losing Its Cool
coondoggie writes "NASA this week said its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE satellite is heating up — not a good thing when your primary mission instrument needs to be kept cold to work. According to NASA, WISE has two coolant tanks that keep the spacecraft's normal operating temperature at 12 Kelvin (minus 438 degrees Fahrenheit). The outer, secondary tank is now depleted, causing the temperature to increase. One of WISE's infrared detectors, the longest-wavelength band most sensitive to heat, stopped producing useful data once the telescope warmed to 31 Kelvin (minus 404 degrees Fahrenheit)."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Enfn9PL5htQ
Plus, you know, it's been rather hot outside. Waaayyyy outside.
I don't understand your numbers. I talk in Celsius.
I talk in English myself.
NASA is US-based, Slashdot is US-based, and the US uses Fahrenheit as the common measure of temperature. As for Kelvin, it's very easy for the rest of us to convert it to Celsius.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
I'll grasp who I like, thank you very much.
"...And who wants to make buttprints in the sands of time?" ~Bob Moawad
PR Dept: We haven't said anything for a while. What's new?
Scientist: Nothing happening really - we're not even getting much from WISE now
PR Dept: What? No WISE?
Scientist: Exactly, it's coming to the planned end of usefulness and heating up
PR Dept: [hitting speeddial] Is that the New York Times? One of our satellites is about to explode...
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My take on this: God grant me the alcohol to accept the things I cannot change, the ammo to change the things I can and the inablity to tell the difference...
You're drawing some irrelevant conclusions there. You're absolutely correct that if you don't have heating you don't need cooling, but there is heat and cooling is necessary because of it.
You are being a toolbag here, because I said nothing about cooling not being required, nor heating not occurring. In fact, if you read between the lines slightly, you can see that I believe that heating is occurring and that cooling is necessary, because my comment makes no sense otherwise. Kind of like yours.
They're using solid hydrogen to achieve the optimum operating temperature. NASA was only able to include a limited amount of it and one of the tanks is now empty; that is the problem. Hopefully this clears things up for you.
I knew all of this before I even commented. Hopefully you go fuck yourself.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Frankly, this whole discussion is moot. -404F isn't any more or less informative to most people than -242C. They're both "really really fucking cold".
The only useful unit for temperatures that low is K.
It seems the only thing missing here is u. FCK!
-404F = Heat not found?
Some people have just got to have their government incompetence stories even when the government is being unbelievably competent.
The government is so incompetent, they can't even fail right!
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