NASA Cancels "Sunjammer" Solar Sail Demonstration Mission

An anonymous reader writes "Space News reports that NASA has cancelled its solar sail demonstration mission (also known as Sunjammer) citing "a lack of confidence in its contractor's ability to deliver." "Company president Nathan] Barnes said that in 2011 he reached out to several NASA centers and companies that he believed could build the spacecraft and leave L'Garde free to focus on the solar sail. None of those he approached — he only identified NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California — took him up on the offer. Rather than give up on the opportunity to land a NASA contract, L'Garde decided to bring the spacecraft development in house. It did not work out, and as of Oct. 17, the company had taken delivery of about $2 million worth of spacecraft hardware including a hydrazine tank from ATK Space Systems of Commerce, California, and four mono-propellant thrusters from Aerojet Rocketdyne of Sacramento, California."

Comments

The Wind from the Sun

[rossdee]

And in related news, an earthquake was reported in Sri Lanka

(A.C. Clarke turning in his grave)

To me, this is good news

[QilessQi]

Whenever NASA (or any other agency) cancels a contract because they lack confidence in the contractor, it probably means that someone in the government is paying attention to what's going on, and is holding the responsible party's feet to the fire.

Compare this to situations where billions of dollars of money are tossed away in the pursuit of unworking (and possibly unworkable) missle defense systems.

Re:Units hurt the brain

[CrimsonAvenger]

Being a European i have no clue how much a pound is, and probably British and US pounds differ too. Ok, i could guess a pound is about half a kilogram. Still makes no sense to mix them up in a scientific article.

Wrong guess, minus five.

Hint: the pound is a unit of FORCE, the kilogram is a unit of MASS. It makes no more sense to measure thrust in kilograms than it does to measure distance in square meters.

If you really want to have consistency, they should have measured the thrust in newtons, NOT in kilograms.

The fact that Europeans (at least one of them) don't know their own measurement system any better than that is appalling....