Ulysses Spacecraft Not Dead Yet 78
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."
Re:End idea (Score:3, Informative)
You think it's like turning your car to make a left hand turn of something?!
Momentum... look it up.
Re:End idea (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:today's NASA kids could learn from this. (Score:3, Informative)
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:End idea (Score:3, Informative)
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.