Comet Probes Given New Duties 48
iamlucky13 writes "In January of 2004, the NASA's Stardust mission made a flyby of comet Wild-2, taking images and collecting samples from its tail that have since been returned to earth in a detachable capsule. On July 4, 2005, Deep Impact smashed a 350 kg projectile traveling 37,000 km/h into comet Tempel 1 as part of its studies of that object. With both craft in good shape at the end of their missions, NASA has been considering additional tasks for the probes. These plans have now been confirmed with a variety of tasks costing an estimated 15% what a new mission would. Among the new duties will be a revisit of Tempel 1, a flyby of comet Boethin, and transit studies of known extra-solar planets."
good (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:good (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:good (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people only follow space exploration at the soundbite level (evening news or whatnot). Hearing that yet another vehicle continues to operate beyond its life expectancy is a good way to create a positive perception of NASA in the general public.
Regards.
Re:good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:good (Score:4, Insightful)
Translated to what we have at NASA or even the DOD today, you have an underpromising risk adverse group of people that still wind up burning through money unnecessarily because they spend it all trying to figure out how to do it all within a precise window. If you look at the sorts of radical research that came about between the 1950s and 1960s, versus what we have today, and I think you'd have to conclude that NASA has utterly lost its nerve. Sometimes you just have to put a guy up on top of a missile to see if it won't blow up. NASA would never do that today, and that is why we have not yet gone back to the moon or to mars.
It's that, they are all a bunch of pussies now, as are most American engineers.
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
Oh, I see we have a brave volunteer here,
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Perhaps that's because people that start out chasing after the sun and the moon and the stars also got a sky-high budget to start with? While people making down-to-earth promises got only down-to-earth budgets?
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Re:good (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't really do that - as you don't know what kind of shape the probe will be in at the end of it's primary mission. That being said, it's been NASA's tacit policy for years to run their probes until they drop if at all possible.
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I think nasa should make it standard mission procedure to plan several possible missions for each probe they send. Its unfortunate that there isn't more interest in space travel- but they may be able to spark more interest with more ambitious missions.
Anything funded by NASA has both a downscope and an upscope -- and usually several of them. As a matter of fact, during the development of a large project, it is quite normal that the total amount of available money goes up or down by a significant margin. So every part and piece is always planned on the the basis of "what do we want to do here, what could we do with 20% less money, what would be possible if we could get 20% more mass, power, funds...".
There's no subsystem that is just planned as one th
This is awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe I am one of a very small minority on slashdot who gets excited about this stuff...
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This is awesome (Score:5, Informative)
Precedent? Hardly. Voyager 2 was originally only planned to flyby only Jupiter and Saturn. The engineers worked without permission from NASA management to build the spacecraft to be able to do a successful flyby of Uranus and Neptune (the probes had an official specification of their lifetimes of something on the order of 3 years or so). Eventually they were able to convince the management that if Voyager 1 was operating safely in space and was looking like it was going to be able to get a good look at Titan then Voyager 2 could reprogram its trajectory so that it could do the flybys of Uranus and Neptune. It was not possible for the Voyager probes to do the specified flyby of Titan and also visit Uranus and Neptune. If Voyager 1 would have blown up or had a problem in space then Voyager 2 would have done the flyby of Titan.
Though to be honest, I'm not even sure if this mission set the original precedent of mission extensions to check out other stuff.
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So yes, I believe it is a precedent.
Re:Define "good science" (Score:5, Insightful)
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For 15% of 200 million dollars, you can do a heck of a lot on the ground. That will fund.
Eight hours in Iraq.
or six hours of M$.
---
Monopolies = Industrial feudalism
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We have gained plenty of knowledge from space exploration. In many people's books, that's enough to make it worthwhile, but we also get to apply that knowledge on the ground.
Money "spent" on space (Score:2)
Exactly, and many critics fail to realize that most of the money "spent" on space is actually being spent here on the ground - to pay engineer salaries, etc. The engineers can then provide education and health care for their family, etc. Sure, the engineers would probably have jobs anyways, but what would those jobs be? Building weapons? (I'm not saying they'd all be doing that, but most engineers would be in a similar field, at least, to their rocket/space/robotic technologies.)
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Summary: Short-term stuff sometimes looks more rewarding than long-term stuff.
Three cheers for NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
Those little rovers are STILL going. There were supposed to last about 3 months and they are still plugging along. And one with a limp - so valiant! And as for the Voyagers, I gulp. SO cool.
Yes, they have some horrible bureaucratic problems. Yes, they have some sever political challenges. But credit where credit is due.
Well done chaps.
Re:Three cheers for NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
Here we are reading about expanded missions, the potential for more data than initially thought, the ability to retask a probe on another planet, or out in space, for a uses that no one even thought of when it was launched years before. And we are getting real and useful information from these missions. All without risking a single life, and at fractions of the cost of manned missions.
I realize that i sound like a broken record on this topic, but really, is there anyone left who doesn't think that one of the biggest roadblocks in the way of our learning about other planets and our solar system is the push for manned space exploration? We are putting people in a tin fort at the edge of our atmosphere, and celebrating it as an accomplishment? What is that going to get us at the moment? Can anyone really justify it as fiscally sound, without having to resort to either 1) technology we don't have yet like a space ship to get us to mars, 2) study of the effects of low gravity on humans (hint, it's bad, we know that), 3) or as a staging area for mars? (it won't be)
I am not saying we should never think about going out into space, but now is not the time. Lets work on designing the ships that will take us there, and figuring out how we are going to do it first. Most of that can be done in labs and in virtual reality, only towards the end of the design cycle will we have to go back out there, and i can almost guarantee you we will not need to stop off at the ISS.
Please write your congress people about the need to fund NASA, and the need to not sacrifice good unmanned missions in the face of wasteful and dangerous manned missions.
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Yup. On the others all that neck hair kept getting in the way.
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Re:Three cheers for NASA (Score:5, Funny)
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"Begun, the clone war has!" -Yoda
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Comet probes: "But you said you would let us go when we were done with our missions!"
Nasa: "I have altered our agreement. Pray I do not alter it further."
Impressive Camera (Score:3, Interesting)
Definitely a great effort, its hard not to love those guys out in Pasadena.
Re:Impressive Camera (Score:5, Informative)
I guess the camera has a high dynamic range but not particularly strong light collecting capabilities, which makes it ideal for doing this with bright, nearby stars, especially with all the assets already on orbit, where all that needs to be done is point and click. Pretty cool trick.
Franchises? (Score:1, Troll)
And don't forget 100% Angus methane!