The special issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics on the first results from Herschel is now available, with hundreds of papers freely accessible!
http://www.aanda.org/index.php?option=com_toc&url=/articles/aa/abs/2010/10/contents/contents.html
Grazie Paolo!
according to Herschel's twitter (ESAHerschel) they will observe comet Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova on Aug 15/16. This small, short period comet has always fascinated me since it was to be flown by "tail first" by Sakigake. Too bad contact with the probe was lost before
from Herschel's twitter:
just published in Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10519.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20111006
and this is ESA's release http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMER89U7TG_index_0.html
this is one of the most amazing solar system discoveries of 2011!
according to tweets by Daniel Fischer (@cosmos4u), Herschel should run out of coolant in March 2013 and ESA is considering end of mission scenarios. Warm observations are not possible, so one idea is to deorbit it from L2 and crash it on the Moon to perform scientific observations.
the story has been picked up by Spaceflight Now
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1210/26herschel/#.UIuNFvLI_5A
Exciting idea; very innovative!
funny enough: it was also one of the possible end of mission scenarios for Chang'e 2. flying it back from L2 to impact the Moon for science
Is the hardware actually damaged by the lack of coolant? If Herschel were placed somewhere where it could conceivably be restocked with consumables at some future time, could it be returned to service? I guess the people who don't want to crash it probably envision some Hubble-inspired scenario like that. I recall though, that the last Hubble service call had to be performed before the gyros and other components ceased to function entirely. It wasn't something that could wait 100 years.
I see at least three reasons why this is not doable:
1. unlike the HST, Herschel was not designed to be serviceable
2. you need to use fuel to keep it into the halo orbit or to redirect it somewhere else to wait for servicing. I understand that fuel remaining is not a issue now, but it will become at a certain moment
3. orbital refuelling has been carried out until now with storable, room temperature liquids (hydrazine and water mostly). transfer of cryogenic fuels has yet to be tested, not to speak of the transfer of super-cold (less than 5K IIRC) liquid helium
Paolo said "funny enough: it was also one of the possible end of mission scenarios for Chang'e 2. flying it back from L2 to impact the Moon for science"
Strictly speaking the Toutatis flyby is not an end of mission scenario. The question is, what is the post-Toutatis trajectory? I am assuming for lack of other information that the spacecraft will not get very far from Earth and its orbit will bring it back, rather than heading off into a more distant heliocentric orbit. Is there any description of its current orbit?
Phil
some insight on the decision to crash Herschel and the possible alternatives on this blog
http://herschellife.blogspot.es/1342197754/july-12th-2012-218-days-to-nominal-end-of-helium/
I would have loved the Herschel trailblazer concept: placing Herschel at the Earth-Moon L2 point to perform tests for future farside communication satellites before crashing it to the surface. unfortunately, the option was apparently deemed too expensive
Finally, no lunar impact http://herschel.esac.esa.int/latest_news.shtml
Too bad. I'm hungry for another point on the lunar map. Oh well - GRAIL coming up soon, presumably.
Phil
http://www.space.com/20883-largest-infrared-space-telescope-ends.html
Probably a stupid question, but I'm guessing that the wavelengths being observed are too far into the infrared to allow a warm mission, ala Spitzer?
Seems like a lack of foresight (or penny pinching) to put up such a huge mirror, and not leave any instruments that could take advantage of it in an extended mission.
EDIT: and let me answer my own question:
http://isnerd.me/2013/04/04/some-more-questions-concerning-herschel/
by the way, the radiation monitors are still useable, and there was a proposal to keep them on. hope they will do it...
http://herschellife.blogspot.es/1342197754/july-12th-2012-218-days-to-nominal-end-of-helium/
some updates from Herschel's twitter account (https://twitter.com/ESAHerschel)
Herschel observations of comet Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova (see post #4) have been published in arXiv today:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.6869
very interesting. while most comets have D/H ratios unlike that of water in the Earth's oceans, comet HMP and Hartley 2 have Earth-like ratios
Herschel detect comet belt around Fomalhaut C
http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/news-archive/224-news-2013/2376-companion-s-comets-the-key-to-curious-exoplanet-system
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