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NASA's Dawn Spacecraft Is Dead (theverge.com)
NASA's Dawn spacecraft has run out of fuel, leading the agency to officially end its mission of exploring the two largest objects in the asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres. "Today, we celebrate the end of our Dawn mission -- its incredible technical achievements, the vital science it gave us and the entire team who enabled the spacecraft to make these discoveries," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C., said in a statement. "The astounding images and data that Dawn collected from Vesta and Ceres are critical to understanding the history and evolution of our solar system," Zurbuchen added. Space.com reports: The $467 million Dawn mission launched in September 2007 to study the protoplanet Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres, which are about 330 miles (530 kilometers) and 590 miles (950 km) wide, respectively. Scientists regard these two bodies as leftovers from the solar system's planet-formation period, which explains the mission's name. Dawn arrived at Vesta in July 2011, then scrutinized the object from orbit for 14 months. The probe's work revealed many intriguing details about Vesta. For example, liquid water once flowed across the protoplanet's surface (likely after buried ice was melted by meteorite impacts), and Vesta sports a towering peak near its south pole that's nearly as tall as Mars' famous Olympus Mons volcano. Dawn left Vesta in September 2012.
The mission team concluded that Dawn had run out of hydrazine after the probe missed scheduled communication check-ins yesterday (Oct. 31) and today. Hydrazine is the fuel used by Dawn's pointing thrusters, so the spacecraft can no longer orient itself to study Ceres, relay data to Earth or recharge its solar panels. Dawn will remain in orbit around Ceres for at least 20 years, and probably much longer than that. Mission team members have said there's a greater than 99 percent probability that the probe won't spiral down onto Ceres' frigid, battered surface for at least five more decades. It's been a rough week for space explorers as not only did Dawn run out of fuel, but the Kepler telescope did too and had to be retired.
The mission team concluded that Dawn had run out of hydrazine after the probe missed scheduled communication check-ins yesterday (Oct. 31) and today. Hydrazine is the fuel used by Dawn's pointing thrusters, so the spacecraft can no longer orient itself to study Ceres, relay data to Earth or recharge its solar panels. Dawn will remain in orbit around Ceres for at least 20 years, and probably much longer than that. Mission team members have said there's a greater than 99 percent probability that the probe won't spiral down onto Ceres' frigid, battered surface for at least five more decades. It's been a rough week for space explorers as not only did Dawn run out of fuel, but the Kepler telescope did too and had to be retired.
Movie title for this. TM.
Dawn of the Dead?
It ran out of gas in the middle of no where. Eventually someone will retrieve it.... in about 50 years. I hope it and the Mars rovers will someday be put in a Museum, though I'll probably be long dead myself before that happens.
for elon to launch a repair mission
Twit. What would be the point of impeaching a space probe that's run out of fuel? Do you suspect that it sold the fuel to Jovian insurgents?
Upcoming mission to 16-psyche the most interesting asteroid, 100 km diameter, known to be metallic nickel-iron. Was it originally part of the molten core of a destroyed planet? We want to know. Launches in 2022, arrives in orbit 2026. Like Dawn, has a very cool ion thrust motor, looks like old science fiction.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Why would the solar panels ever not face the sun, come on NASA
Sold it? It was stolen!
Unfounded, scurrilous accusations.
Can any part of the circuitry be driven sufficiently to set up an
elecron loop (using the remaining solar energy collection) so as to
slowly rotate the craft (via Newtons third law) into a better orientation
for solar collection and/or observation?
That might buy time for a better idea...
Seriously, are we not doing phrasing any more?
Or are they going to inter the entire team with the dead spacecraft, so that the team may continue to do science and otherwise support the mission in the afterlife?
Why does two incredibly successful missions coming to an expected end qualify as causing a rough week? I really wish we had some editors with a clue.
I will miss the Dawn Journal which has been a fascinating description of the engineering behind the mission.
Following the logic "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day" I would guess that the probe will sometimes get light enough to power itself as it orbits - likewise it might be able to send sometimes Maybe these charge and send widows could be used to take snap shot in a new mission mode rather than letting it rot. I suppose that reprogramming it the catch as you need it to and have power at the same time for now A relay satellite would be handy, to widen the send receive window enough to use the point when the natural orientation lets solar power it.
it's all fake
An article about the mission over and running out of fuel. At my funeral I'm hoping for at least some photos of what I actually did in life and not artist renderings. Even a photo of how it was built would be interesting.
It ran out of gas in the middle of no where. Eventually someone will retrieve it.... in about 50 years.
We haven't been back to the Moon in 50 years which is FAR easier to get to. Thinking we're going to be back to Ceres to retrieve a dead probe within another 50 years seems extremely improbable. I know we're all excited about what SpaceX and the rest are doing but let's pump the brakes slightly shall we? Our progress in space isn't going that quickly. Nobody is going to fund a mission to retrieve this thing because there is no economic or scientific value in doing so. If we do send a craft capable of retrieving stuff there are FAR more interesting things to retrieve than a dead probe.
My first computer only had 64k memory and my current one has 16GB. Cellphones used to be lugged around in cases, now they can fit on my wrist. People used to say humans can't fly. Therefore we will get the probe within 50 years.
Got any more irrelevant analogies to throw in there? How about the rate of internet adoption in third world countries or the rapid adoption of yoga pants? I have to assume you are trolling...
Pro tip. The rate of increase of memory in your computer has fuck-all to do with the problems of deep space travel.
Just because we've made fast progress in one field doesn't mean we are capable of making equivalently fast progress in a completely different endeavor. We've been doing space travel for about 60 years now and we haven't made more than incremental leaps in capabilities for 40 years. Most of the people reading this weren't even alive the last time we put a man on the moon.
Twit. What would be the point of impeaching a space probe that's run out of fuel? Do you suspect that it sold the fuel to Jovian insurgents?
I just know the Cardassians are behind this!
Or is that the Kardashians?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It seems like the point of failure for a lot of these efforts is fuel supply. They should incorporate some kind of refueling function. I think it would be much cheaper to send a fuel tank to a rendezvous then launch a replacement device. Kepler could probably run another 10 years and it's right there.
May your blade chip and shatter.
Hurr durr...Orange Man BAD!!!!
There was a saying in USSR, that loosely translates as: "If you don't praise yourself in the morning, all day you'll feel like having been spat on..."
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Five hundred years ago, the fastest a human being had ever travelled was 25mph on a horse. A hundred years ago, early planes could reach 100mph. Fifty years ago, the Apollo missions travelled at 24,000 mph. In another fifty years, we'll have space liners going several times the speed of light, and popping to an asteroid will be like walking over the road to a corner shop.
You've been watching too many science fiction movies. Presuming you aren't trolling, I admire the optimism but it isn't going to go down like that. You are just extrapolating naively based on unrelated past events with cherry picked data. There is no evidence based reason to believe your hypothesis and considerable evidence to doubt it. Our progress in the last 50 years has been somewhere between mild incremental advancement and a regression in capabilities. The economics of space travel haven't improved much - basically only major nation states and a few mega corporations can afford to loft something into low earth orbit much less into deep space. Despite the efforts of SpaceX and others that isn't likely to see more than modest improvement in the next few decades. Dropping the cost of a launch from hundreds of millions to tens of millions still puts it well out of economic viability for most of the population.
My take is that it will be a few centuries before we can get more than a handful of people routinely off the surface of Earth.
Really.. 468 million for 4020 days?
Cost
$467,000,000
Estimated Launch Date
09/01/07
Official Retire
11/01/18
Total Days
4020
$ / Day
$116,169.15
Where do I sign up for that?!
He didn't say humans. He said someone.
Umm, if it isn't humans then who exactly? Last I checked we have no evidence of aliens with an interest in dead probes near Ceres and my border collie isn't about to start a space program any time soon no matter how many treats I offer him.
What wasn't clear from the post is both missions (Dawn and Kepler) were both successful and lasted well past their intended mission lengths. Specifically, Dawn was finished over a year ago, and at that point they decided that they'd continue to collect data until the fuel ran out - which happened yesterday. Kepler lasted well over twice its designed mission lifetime. Again - "it still works, so we'll use it until the fuel runs out".
Kepler ended up surveying over 500,000 stars and has detected greater than 2600 planets. The data collected will be continued to be used for decades to come to find more planets and other information about the physics of planetary system development. The successor to Kepler, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) was launched in April and just had first-light a couple of months ago.
Dawn was successful as the first NASA probe to use ion drives which let it enter and leave the orbits of the two asteroids. It successfully made maps of both bodies as well as detailed spectroscopic maps in both the infrared and visible spectrums.
Both missions did excellent science, outlived their planned lifetimes and should be celebrated for it.
Why would the solar panels ever not face the sun
Because the probe is out of fuel used to maintain pointing.
I think he's asking why the panels are not on some sort of electrically controlled mount that can be oriented independently of the spacecraft. I'm not advocating for that design, just interpreting his question.
I beat it with MY FISTS!
Well you should have listened to your Mom when she told you to stop doing that.
some spacecraft have panels on a gimbal. Some have comm antennas on a gimbal. These days, almost all spacecraft have the instruments body mounted. It's really complex to have a spun and despun part of a spacecraft so that some instruments are spun and others aren't.
Juno is spin stabilized, and it's a royal pain to deal with, particularly if you change orientation (because of that whole conservation of momentum thing and gyroscopic action).