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NASA's Planet-Hunting Kepler Space Telescope Is Running Out of Fuel (mashable.com)
Charlie Sobeck, the system engineer for the Kepler space telescope mission, said in a NASA statement that Kepler is running low on gas. According to Sobekc, it only has "several months" before it reaches the end of the its life. Mashable reports: NASA's Kepler spacecraft has been peering deep into the Milky Way galaxy for nearly a decade. It has spotted over 2,500 confirmed planets orbiting distant stars, and over 2,500 more possible worlds are waiting to be confirmed. Thirty of these confirmed planets live inside their host stars' habitable zones, places where liquid water could exist like it does on Earth. NASA placed the Kepler telescope 94 million miles away from Earth, in an orbit around the sun. This way, Earth's gravity and reflected light don't interfere with Kepler's precise measurements of distant planets. Out there, in the void, it's extremely unlikely that Kepler will become a threatening piece of space junk that could pose collision hazards to other satellites. Although Kepler will soon be spent and left to its long, lonely orbit in space, the spacecraft will soon be replaced by another exoplanet-hunting space telescope, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). TESS is set to launch into space on April 16.
If you need to build, use and scrap a truck just to fuel up that car, springing for a newer better model instead might be indeed the better course of action.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Yes, there have been concerns raised about spacecraft that contain plutonium power sources, but it's not about polluting space. The issue that's raised is if there's a problem during the launch, the casing for the nuclear power source ruptures, and radioactive materials are dispersed in the atmosphere. The worst case scenarios have very low probabilities, and the impacts would actually be fairly low, but it's enough to alarm people. I'm not aware that anyone has complained about the risk of these spacecraft polluting space, so that's simply incorrect.
By the way, lots of other spacecraft that contain plutonium for nuclear power also contain other fuel. Spacecraft with nuclear power sources are generally those with missions to the outer solar system, where solar power would be insufficient to power the instruments. Kepler doesn't contain plutonium for nuclear power because it's close to the sun where solar power is sufficient to provide enough power for the instruments. However, all of these spacecraft do contain other fuel for the purpose of providing thrust. Even spacecraft like Cassini-Huygens and New Horizons need a source of fuel for providing thrust in addition to their nuclear power source. Voyager 1 and 2 have nuclear power sources to power their instruments, but also used hydrazine for their thrusters. Kepler is no different in the need to have fuel for its thrusters, and that's what's in short supply. However, it doesn't contain a nuclear power source because it's close enough to the sun that solar power can keep the instruments running.
And Kepler was equipped with extra fuel for its thrusters, as a contingency. This has actually enabled Kepler to continue operating well beyond its original mission.
I actually hope you're trolling, because your post is incorrect in many ways.
Dang I wish my 1966 beetle got anything like that
NASA has a page with frequently asked questions about Kepler's fuel status. From that page:
Why wasn’t Kepler designed to be refueled?
NASA decided to put Kepler in an orbit around the Sun that is well beyond the influence of the Earth and Moon to simplify operations and ensure an extremely quiet, stable environment for scientific observations. Well beyond our reach, Kepler compensated by flying considerably more fuel than was necessary to meet the mission objectives.
To summarize, the location of the spacecraft makes a refueling mission impractical and expensive.
With our launch systems likely to continue to get cheaper and cheaper per kilo, maybe we should start working on a system for refueling and maintenancing some of our current sats in operation. We won't be able to get something in place quick enough for Kepler I imagine, but someone really needs to start thinking about how to address this. Sure we can put up more advanced and brand spanking new sats but the process of fixing something would probably be cheaper in the long run compared to building something new which takes funding, planning, and building; instead, you could launch the equivalent of a space tow-truck to go out and fix it. Send up parts, fuel, and appropriate boost assist to get the "tow-truck" out there and patch it up and then boost back to the "truck garage."
Yes, it's running out of fuel but it's also been operating for about a decade. "In 2013, Kepler’s primary mission ended when a second reaction wheel broke" which means this won't really be a big loss since it's been minimally functional for good while. The good news is that the James Webb Space Telescope is on track to be operational in about 18 months.
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NASA has characterized Kepler's orbit as "Earth-trailing".[53] With an orbital period of 372.5 days, Kepler slowly falls farther behind Earth (about 16 million miles per annum). As of 1 June 2017, the distance to Kepler from Earth was about 0.917 AU (137 million km).[3]
Wanna buy a shirt?
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It's out of fuel, not power.
Worse, he's SCOTTISH!
Rockets need a mass to provide force. Doesn't matter if it has power if it is out of reaction mass.
If your car is worth $5K, you're somewhere in the US and it runs out of gas somewhere in the Gobi desert then yes, you probably should just buy another one.
My car runs out of fuel in 10 km, I should buy another one.
Better car analogy: Your 10 year old electric car with 300k miles on it, torn seats, and a shot suspension, has a shot battery that won't hold a charge anymore. Do you spend $50k on getting the battery replaced, or spend $40k on a brand new electric car with newer tech?
find a way to bring them back to earth so we can study what space did to them (and thus make the next one better)
We actually have already had missions that were to specifically test materials in space. Further study is executed on the ISS. Leave the science to the scientists.
so that we can put them somewhere the public can have a better understanding of what we learned?
We always build more than just one. We have plenty of duplicates to put on display.
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