What's Up With Ulysses?, alive? dead? cancelled soon? |
What's Up With Ulysses?, alive? dead? cancelled soon? |
Sep 27 2005, 04:05 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 356 Joined: 12-March 05 Member No.: 190 |
What is up with the tiny Ulysses spacecraft that was launched in 1990 to study the solar whatever at high lattitudes? Last I heard it was in danger of dying because the RTG power was running low and at aphelion there was a risk of the hydrazine freezing/exploding in its propulsion system. Well that was like a year ago and I haven't heard anything since. It looks like it should've passed aphelion by now and should be out of danger.....
Its been going up there for over a full solar cycle, is it one of the missions on the chopping block because of the new humans on moon/mars thing? |
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Jun 8 2008, 09:34 AM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1729 Joined: 3-August 06 From: 43° 35' 53" N 1° 26' 35" E Member No.: 1004 |
From the "programmes in progress" section of the latest ESA bulletin
The third northern solar polar pass was completed on 15 March. In spite of the reduced data rates following the X-band anomaly in mid-January and the transition to an S-band mission, key arameters characterising the solar wind, magnetic field and energetic particles continued to be measured. The picture that emerges shows great similarity to that observed in 1995, during the first northern polar pass, with the spacecraft immersed in the fast solar wind flowing from the Sun’s northern polar coronal hole. Efforts to delay hydrazine freezing will continue in the coming months. It is very difficult to estimate exactly when the hydrazine will freeze since predictions are based on thermal modelling rather than actual temperature measurements in telemetry. However, a projected mission operations end date of 1 July 2008 has been agreed. It is possible that operations could continue beyond that date but it is also possible that the mission will end earlier. Once freezing occurs, it may be possible to thaw the fuel again for a while by switching off instruments but the science mission will essentially be over. When thawing is no longer possible, the loss of manoeuvrability will result in an increasing Earth off-pointing angle and the loss of telemetry after about a week. |
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