ICE is alive ! Options

[Rakhir]

This information from Emily is amazing.
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001673/

ICE is alive and may perhaps be assigned to a new mission.

[Juramike]

An ignorant question here, but why would you instruct a still-functioning spacecraft to turn off it's radio transmitter? Wouldn't that almost guarantee to kill the spacecraft (or at least make it harder to find?)

I can't imagine the radio output would be powerful enough to interfere with any radio studies (and long-term tracking info might be kinda fun anyway - to measure all those funky solar pressure effects and so on....)

-Mike

[djellison]

Wouldn't that almost guarantee to kill the spacecraft

That's sort of the point

Doug

[ugordan]

Yes, but what's the harm in leaving the spacecraft alive? If you neglect possible radio interference with a DSN station while it's trying to communicate with another s/c on the same frequency and in the same part of the sky, but really, what are the odds of that happening?

[Hungry4info]

Yes, but what's the harm in leaving the spacecraft alive?

Funding.

[ugordan]

Funding.

Funding doesn't run the spacecraft radio transmitter. It does not do so whether we're listening or not.

[Hungry4info]

Oh. I thought one needed to continue funding a mission for it to remain active/operational, like with Voyager. Is the funding to pay the people who work with the spacecraft?

[brellis]

Polluting the solar system with radio waves could be a serious issue as we develop more sensitive instruments for listening to the cosmos.

[ugordan]

Polluting the solar system with radio waves could be a serious issue as we develop more sensitive instruments for listening to the cosmos.

I don't see how this can worsen the situation when we've already crowded the Earth orbit with all kinds of radio-active stuff. As along as it's tracked and catalogued, no confusion should arise. We might as well turn the Voyagers off then - or do missions that radiate, but continue to be funded not classify as "pollution"?