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NASA Solar Sail Lost In Space
An anonymous reader writes "According to Spaceflight Now: 'NASA has not heard from the experimental NanoSail-D miniature solar sail in nearly a week, prompting officials to wonder if the craft actually deployed from a larger mother satellite despite initial indications it ejected as designed.' NanoSail-D's spring-ejection was indicated at 1:31 a.m. EST Monday, leading to a predicted release of the spacecraft's sail membrane around 1:30 a.m. EST Thursday."
Maybe it worked too well -D
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The reason it was lost is that it forgot to tack in a particularly bad solar wind.
Bad luck on losing the sail. I had some tiny direct extra stake in the Planetary Soc's solar sail attempts and still have a little on their latest as a member. I'd really like to see this work as it seems so much more elegant than just throwing more chemicals at space travel.
Reminds us that not much in space is routine; indeed it's still rocket science.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
... Solar Fail!
Ha ha! Ha ha! ... *vomits*
this big thing spreading wings to come after them , so they took it....
Gone with the (solar) wind
While setbacks are inevitable it doesn't mean that scientists should not keep trying.
"Weird solar sail with "NASA" written on it found"
They're always stealing or breaking our stuff, those jerks.
Sad when an internet meme is so appropriate... So they had a microswitch that says it deployed. Why not put a small camera on one or both to provide some visual feedback? It is an experimental deployment of (1) a cubesat from a microsat, and (2) an experimental sail membrane, yes? How would they know, for certain, that it deployed correctly if there are no pics? Given how small cameras are today, it seems like a no-brainer.
ust sit right back and you'll hear a tale, A tale of a fateful trip That started from this tropic port Aboard this tiny ship. The mate was a mighty sailing man, The skipper brave and sure. Five passengers set sail that day For a three hour tour, a three hour tour. The weather started getting rough, The tiny ship was tossed, If not for the courage of the fearless crew The minnow would be lost, the minnow would be lost.
Solar sails are not exactly rocket science...
"Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!"
Danger Will Robinson
NASA = Tired old dinosaurs
I've lost me satellite!
Given how small cameras are today, it seems like a no-brainer.
Perhaps the name "NanoSail-D" will give a hint on how small this satellite is.
However, the camera size itself is not all that matters. In order to send telemetry down there must exist a telemetry transmitter on board. It might surprise you to know that even large satellites often transmit telemetry at 1 kbps or so.
Transmitting wide band, such as needed by a video signal, requires higher power. Sending high power down needs a bulkier and heavier transmitter. More power in the telemetry beacon requires more DC power, which means bigger batteries and bigger solar panels.
These are the two main constraints in a spacecraft: mass and consumed power. Every piece of equipment on board must be screened for these two parameters, nothing is included unless it's absolutely certain that it couldn't be done with less mass and less power.
Spring ejection? Outer space? Wouldn't be the first time the obvious slipped right by NASA.
(flails arms uselessly)
Is there a Dr Smith on the project team?
Commencing countdown engine's on.....
Tom?
Tom?
Three hour tour...
Three hour tour...
Maybe it just hit a Tachyon Eddy and left the solar system...
I've always thought that every satellite/ship/station should be deigned with some kind of slow drive system and/or quick "death release" system that would cause them to fire out and land on or near the same spot on the moon. Then when/if moon bases/operations were a go you would have a huge stockpile of recycle materials to get you going. I'm sure the logistics are insane, but it seems even some kind of "bag it and sling it" system to shift orbital debris into a usable stockpile of stuff would make sense.
Of course I'm also for railgunning all our nuclear waste into the sun so,...practical isn't my middle name.
It ws only supposed to be a three hour tour.
Have gnu, will travel.
I probably was burned up due to solar wind. Too flimsy.
Spring Ejaculation!? Only in the southern hemisphere!
And there we were all in one place...
...sail off into the sunset
Have you ever been shopping for cameras that are capable of surviving more than a day of space radiation? How about buying the video encoder for it and getting your extra data traffic through the transmitter on the thing you hurled into space? You're going to be spending millions just to watch a few minutes of a deployment that either works, or it doesn't.
You already know what it's going to look like if it works, so for that occasion, using a microswitch will suffice. The only reason why you might want to put a camera on is to see how it fails. For that you will need a lot of speed and resolution, IE expensive equipment, lots of data to be stored on the solid state so it can reliably be (re)transmitted to earth. I doubt NASA, with it's current budget, will want to spend many millions so they can show the world they failed.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
If pound-force was good enough for the Baby Jesus, it should be good enough for NASA. What the hell is a Newton anyway - some kind of French furry fetish?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
They've modeled what they believe happened, using a mallard-based simulator:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEBLt6Kd9EY
Dr. Zachary Smith does it again!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
DO we not have 1 million webcams everywhere, and does not everyone have routers now that can send info back and forth within a network, could they not have attached a camera to view things, from both the sail and the deployment capsule, and also add some sort of beacon to transmit data as if to say, we do not trust things will go perfectly, so we will add some way of visually confirming everything did go ok...???