Helium Depleted, Herschel Space Telescope Mission Ends

AmiMoJo writes "The billion-euro Herschel observatory has run out of the liquid helium needed to keep its instruments and detectors at their ultra-low functioning temperature. This equipment has now warmed, meaning the telescope cannot see the sky. Its 3.5m mirror and three state-of-the-art instruments made it the most powerful observatory of its kind ever put in space, but astronomers always knew the helium store onboard would be a time-limiting factor." Reader etash points to a collection of some infrared imagery that Herschel collected.

Comments

Re:Orbital pickup truck

[mrsquid0]

The Earth-Sun L2 point is out of reach with the old Space Shuttle, but the original point is a good one. It is too bad that we do not have the capability to repair and restock the consumables on spacecraft in the inner Solar System. It has been nearly 45 years since we first went to the Moon. We should be able to move around in our band of the Solar System by now.