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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#1
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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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Sep 27 2005, 06:22 PM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 356 Joined: 12-March 05 Member No.: 190 |
Hmmm looks like alot of the instruments are switched off "HUS, BAM-E, KEP EPAC/GAS and STO2 are off." from here.
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Sep 28 2005, 08:23 AM
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#3
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Member Group: Members Posts: 127 Joined: 18-July 05 Member No.: 438 |
QUOTE (deglr6328 @ Sep 27 2005, 08:22 PM) Hmmm looks like alot of the instruments are switched off "HUS, BAM-E, KEP EPAC/GAS and STO2 are off." from here. That's due to power-saving measures. As the output from the RTGs is decreasing, not all the instruments can be operated at once. The (arguably) "key" instruments for monitoring solar wind conditions, wind composition, and the interplanetary magnetic field are all on, and providing near-continuous, unique data of excellent quality. It's unfortunate that all the other instruments cannot currently operate at once... there is some swapping of operation time going on between the instruments, and some instruments are more likely to be kept on because they're providing heat that prevents the hydrazine from freezing at key locations in the fuel lines. As Ulysses nears the Sun again over the next couple of years, the heaters will not be required so much, freeing up power to operate more of the instruments again. Funding has been approved by ESA and NASA to the end of the third fast latitude scan in 2008 (when Ulysses goes from solar pole to pole in 10 months). As a result of the change of focus at NASA, they're reviewing their funding for Ulysses and around 10 other missions, including Voyager. A loss of any of these extended missions would be a terrible waste - they're providing excellent, valuable data for a relatively tiny outlay. Ulysses is particularly unique - it's probably going to be a very long time before a spacecraft is put into a near-polar solar orbit again, so the data are extremely valuable. As well as providing the valuable out-of-ecliptic heliospheric data that it was primarily designed to do, Ulysses did cross a second comet tail in 2000 (McNaught-Hartley), and performed unique observations of Jupiter last year. See the Ulysses Status Reports for more information. |
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