ESA Declares Flagship Envisat Observing Satellite Lost

An anonymous reader writes with news that the European Space Agency has lost contact with its Envisat environmental satellite mere weeks after celebrating a full decade in orbit. Engineers have spent the last month trying to re-establish contact, and will continue to do so for another two months. "With ten sophisticated sensors, Envisat has observed and monitored Earth’s land, atmosphere, oceans and ice caps during its ten-year lifetime, delivering over a thousand terabytes of data. An estimated 2500 scientific publications so far have been based on this information, furthering our knowledge of the planet." The ESA was hoping Envisat would stay operational for another two years, until Sentinel satellites from the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security initiative became operational.

Comments

No problem

[geekoid]

we'll just fix it during a Shuttle mission...

Re:No problem

[Intrepid imaginaut]

If we had a Star Tram running it would be trivial to fix. Seriously, $2 billion and poof! Gone, no way to retrieve or repair it. This really underlines the ridiculous state of our global space industry.

Re:No problem

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Why? Even if a Space Shuttle were available right now, it would be much cheaper to launch a new satellite to gain those extra years. With a great likelihood, it would last much longer than those wished-for extra two years, and the amortized cost of the first two years of the new sat's lifespan would be lower than the atrocious cost of launching the Shuttle and training the crew to do the repairs (do we even know what's wrong with the sat, as we can't communicate with it?), not to mention the risk of radiation belts exposure at >700 km of altitude. It may also turn out that the damage is irreparable - in that case you've wasted, say, $700M+ for nothing.

Re:No problem

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The original projected lifespan was five years. We got ten out of it. I don't think that anyone is going to hang himself over this.

Re:No problem

[b00le]

Maybe you're just trying to be funny. Envisat did much to establish the facts and mechanisms of climate change. There's no conspiracy: it grew old and died.

Re:No problem

[DerekLyons]

Why? Even if a Space Shuttle were available right now, it would be much cheaper to launch a new satellite to gain those extra years.

Given that a Shuttle launch only costs around $150m* USD, I suspect you're way off base. Doubly so since it cost 2.5 *billion* dollars to develop and launch in the first place. Now, admittedly you're not going to pay the full development costs the second time around, but you're still looking at probably 3-500 million plus for the new bird and nearly 200 million for the launch alone.

*That's what it costs to add a flight to the manifest.

Re:No problem

[RenderSeven]

Maybe it overheated?

Not EVERYTHING can be a Voyager Spacecraft.

[pecosdave]

BTW - hows that whole ROHS thing working out for you?

(I know, aerospace components have an ROHS waiver, but when we order stuff from Europe and try to use the ROHS waiver they still send us ROHS anyways half the time)

Re:Not EVERYTHING can be a Voyager Spacecraft.

[pecosdave]

Yeah, you have NO IDEA how worried I am about a Voyager Spacecraft crashing into the Earth and contaminating it with minerals that came from it......

Re:Not EVERYTHING can be a Voyager Spacecraft.

[tibit]

Dangerous chemicals, wakalixes, same thing. Your body is full of dangerous chemicals. Just inject yourself with some extra insulin and tell me how it goes. It's 100% natural and comes from your own body!

Where it comes to leaded PCB assemblies, you're wholly and saldy misinformed. Non-leaded PCB assemblies have bigger environmental impact due to a confluence of reasons. Any of those reasons by itself is perhaps a minor thing, but when taken together they are quite significant.

Re:Not EVERYTHING can be a Voyager Spacecraft.

[GameboyRMH]

Look at the name of the account in the URL. There's some character trickery going on.

Re:Destroyed by climate denialists

[GameboyRMH]

I'm posting from a low-power PC in an office building with a gray water system and I drive a short commute with 30-40MPG cars. You're the one who's talking about destroying civilization and not doing anything.

I really want to get my PDA onto solar-only just for such posts.

Re:Over a Petabyte of Pixelated Back-Yard Porn??

[b00le]

Synthetic Aperture radar porn with a 30 metre pixel size - kind of a specialised taste.

The Warranty Ran Out

[Immerial]

Let me guess... it had a 10-year warranty. See, this is why you need to buy the extended warranty for satellites. ;^)

Re:Over a Petabyte of Pixelated Back-Yard Porn??

[b00le]

ASAR, MERIS, AATSR, MWR, GOMOS, MIPAS, SCIAMACHY, DORIS, LRR (https://earth.esa.int/web/guest/missions/esa-operational-eo-missions/envisat/instruments) - although only the first two gave anything that could be called an image. Maybe "integrated atmospheric water vapour column" sounds promising...