Ulysses Spacecraft Not Dead Yet

iminplaya sends in the good news that reports of the death of the Ulysses mission are premature. (We've discussed the impending shutdown of the 17-year-old mission a couple of times this year.) Ulysses is a joint NASA / ESA mission to study the sun from an orbit inclined almost 90 degrees from the ecliptic. From the Planetary Society blog post: "Ulysses is not dead yet. ESA issued a statement in February saying that, as Ulysses' radioisotope thermoelectric generators were running out of power, the spacecraft would likely die some time this year. The actual death blow to the spacecraft was likely to be the freezing of hydrazine fuel in a cold spot in a fuel line. Mission controllers found creative ways to prevent the freezing, but the solution was not a long-term one, and ESA had a ceremonial send-off and wrap-up of the mission in mid-June, announcing that the spacecraft would be shut down on July 1. However, it now appears that announcement was premature. ESA issued a statement on July 3 titled 'Ulysses hanging on valiantly.' And on Wednesday, the [Ulysses mission operations manager indicated] that Ulysses' voyage could actually continue for some time."

Of course it's not dead ...

At least not until Netcraft confirms it.

And maybe not even then ...

Re:

Not dead [wikipedia.org]. Just takes way too long to read and interpret.

Re:Of course it's not dead ...

I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. 'E's dead, that's what's wrong with it!
No, no, 'e's uh,...he's resting.
Look, matey, I know a dead spacecraft when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable ship, the Ulysses, idn'it, ay? Beautiful solar collectors!
The solar collectors don't enter into it. It's stone dead.
Nononono, no, no! 'E's resting!
All right then, if he's restin', I'll wake him up! (shouting at the cage) 'Ello, Mister Ulysses! I've got a lovely fresh battery for you if you show...(owner hits the retros)
There, he moved!
No, he didn't, that was you hitting the retros!
I never!!
Yes, you did!
I never, never did anything...
(yelling) 'ELLO ULYSSES!!!!! Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o'clock alarm call!

Re:Of course it's not dead ...

probably pining for the fjords.

And now...

http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/grail/grail-02.htm [mwscomp.com]

Of Course Ulysses' Not Dead!

It'll probably return after twenty years or so, Poseidon be damned!

Re:Of Course Ulysses' Not Dead!

An appropriate poem [utoronto.ca] for a dieing spacecraft.

Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

It's a rewrite of the original by Dante

Dante, Inferno, Canto 26

Written over 700 years ago and still brilliant. This is just a small extract:

"O frati", dissi "che per cento milia
perigli siete giunti a l'occidente,
a questa tanto picciola vigilia
d'i nostri sensi ch'è del rimanente,
non vogliate negar l'esperienza,
di retro al sol, del mondo sanza gente.
Considerate la vostra semenza:
fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza''.
Li miei compagni fec'io sì aguti,
con questa orazion picciola, al cammin

Of Course Ulysses's Dead!

Ulysses S. Grant died at 8:06 a.m. on Thursday, July 23, 1885, at the age of 63 in Mount McGregor, Saratoga County, New York. His last word was a request, "Hydrazine."

Re:

Well, to be fair, Odysseus was a general of sorts too. :-)

Tales of Brave Ulysses

You thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever,
But you rode upon a steamer to the violence of the sun.

And the colors of the sea blind your eyes with trembling mermaids,
And you touch the distant beaches with tales of brave Ulysses:
How his naked ears were tortured by the sirens sweetly singing,
For the sparkling waves are calling you to kiss their white laced lips.

And you see a girl's brown body dancing through the turquoise,
And her footprints make you follow where the sky loves the sea.
And when your fingers find her, she drowns you in her body,
Carving deep blue ripples in the tissues of your mind.

The tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers,
And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter.

Her name is Aphrodite and she rides a crimson shell,
And you know you cannot leave her for you touched the distant sands
With tales of brave Ulysses; how his naked ears were tortured
By the sirens sweetly singing.

The tiny purple fishes run lauging through your fingers,
And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter.

today's NASA kids could learn from this.

You don't need billion dollar budget programs to achieve amazing science, low cost well thought out missions can do great things. maybe it's the thinking part that has them stumped.

Re:

How do the inflation-adjusted costs of previous missions compare to current mission costs?
 

Re:

ESA says [esa.int] the total cost of Ulysses has been about 1 billion Euro, which is about $1.5 billion US. Might want to try a different example.

Re:today's NASA kids could learn from this.

that's 1.5 billion OVER 17 YEARS.

that's bargin basement space exploration. it's the perfect example, thank you very much.

Re:today's NASA kids could learn from this.

a) Ulysses has cost over a billion.

b) NASA has had spacecraft which have lasted longer than anyone thought they would. The current Mars rovers for example, and Mars Pathfinder, as well as the Galileo spacecraft, which had at least 4 extended missions. Not to mention the Voyagers. The correlation between cost and the lifetime of the craft is not coincidental.

c) Having a mission that lasts a long time is not indicative of a well thought out mission. I think if any agency is going to blow 1 billion on a mission, they're going to think it out pretty damn well. Imagine the public backlash if it weren't thought out (i.e. Mars Polar Lander)...

Re:today's NASA kids could learn from this.

Well there's a tagline: "Lack of funding, kills stuff faster then outer space". I reckon the military might even pay to turn that into a weapon.

Ulysses Spacecraft Not Dead Yet

Ulysses Spacecraft Not Dead Yet

Hmm, that reminded me of this movie [youtube.com]...

Ejection from the solar system?

The blog article at the Planetary Society website says that Ulysses will encounter Jupiter and be ejected from the solar system. Is this a theoretical possibility, or has a date for this been determined? Ulysses originally encountered Jupiter to fling it out of the ecliptic plane so it could study the sun at high latitudes. Its aphelion is still at Jupiter's orbit. If it encounters Jupiter again, any number of things could happen to it. The statement about it being ejected seems to imply that a specific encounter trajectory is already predicted.

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Oh for fuck's sake, for the last time on /. IT CAN'T BE DONE.

You think it's like turning your car to make a left hand turn of something?!

Momentum... look it up.

Thank you

Thank you for telling people their idea is stupid. Sometimes they need it, the uneducated louts.

Now, I think NASA is overlooking a completely obvious and fooldproof solution. Problem: they have frozen pipes. They're also near the Sun. A quick flyby of the sun for some warmth, and they're good to go! However, if I remember my science classes correctly, they have to keep the pass under a certain speed, or they run into problems with humpback whales.

Re:Thank you

Nonsense, they merely have to keep it going at least 50mph, otherwise a crazed biker will blow it up.

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How do you plan to arrange that close encounter when its current orbit takes it nowhere near Jupiter, genius?

Re:

How do you plan to arrange that close encounter when its current orbit takes it nowhere near Jupiter, genius?

Move Jupiter then. Mohammed, mountain, mountain, Mohammed. Think outside the box sometime, genius. :)

Re:

Ulysses will get near Jupiter eventually. Maybe if instead of stating that "its current orbit takes it nowhere near Jupiter" you had tried to prove it by posting orbital elements, you would have seen the flaw in your thinking.

"Eventually" isn't going to help any, if by that time the RTG is cooled down enough so that the hydrazine has frozen to a solid so that the craft can't be manuevered for the fly-by. That would be the flaw in your thinking.

Re:End idea

If it had enough left for that sort of maneuver, it wouldn't be in trouble. Of course, it never had enough fuel to do that. It had just enough to reach a Juipiter fly-by in order to get into a near polar orbit of the Sun.