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Helium Depleted, Herschel Space Telescope Mission Ends

Posted by timothy on from the say-goodbye-in-a-squeaky-voice dept.

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.

5 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Orbital pickup truck by mabhatter654 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If only we had a plan for recurring orbital missions... A "space pickup" that would launch on a regular basis to make pit stops for things like extra helium.

    To think how many multi-decade projects like this will "rot on the vine".

    1. Re:Orbital pickup truck by Megane · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It has been nearly 45 years since we first went to the Moon.

      We only went there because of a super stretch effort that went to the limits of our technology and budgets. It was an anomaly in the progression of space exploration, and the extreme effort involved probably even set us back by a couple of decades. We are currently on a more normal progression of space exploration, with the possible exception that we (the western world, as opposed to the Chinese) may bypass the moon this time around because we've already been there and it's not really very interesting.

      Actually, I'm surprised that we've sent hardly any robotic missions to the moon in the past 45 years. There's a lot less need for humans when communication delays are only a few seconds, and maybe we could find out something interesting enough to want to go back there.

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
    2. Re:Orbital pickup truck by MightyYar · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I have to disagree. Just last night I was marveling at how we have rovers cruising around mars, orbiters and probes strewn all over the place, and how the technology is now at hand to create "tugboats" for asteroids. Maybe manned missions have been disappointing, but robotic missions are amazing too.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    3. Re:Orbital pickup truck by demonlapin · · Score: 4, Interesting

      At the time of Apollo, the program was consuming half the IC manufacturing capacity of the entire world. The ships were essentially all one-off constructions built by hand. Go read How Apollo Flew to the Moon. Yes, the physics of it were understood. Yes, as experience showed, we had all the technological pieces to make it happen, in much the same way that we almost certainly could conduct a manned mission to Mars if we really wanted to. But doing so required an enormous amount of blood and treasure.

  2. Salvage Rights by jdigriz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    SpaceX should go after it and salvage it robotically for use as a solar thermal concentrator. 3.5M mirrors that are already in space don't exactly grow on trees. A simple high-efficiency Ion engine (Dawn-class)and a robonaut should be able to handle the job. They can then lease the asset to Planetary Resources or whoever wants to do industrial experiments. Doesn't have to be quick. Cheap and slow is the way to go here.