Friday or MondayAt NASA, it ain't over when it's over.
The space agency often criticized for pouring billions of wasted dollars into a financially bloated space station with
limited science capabilities also knows how to throw a few good but risky ideas against the wall, see what sticks, and then milk the successes for all their worth.The results can be stunning.
| Inside Mission Control |
| Mission Manager Marc Rayman was so worried that Deep Space 1 would fail, he worked to keep people out of the control room so engineers could focus on expected problems. But he couldn't keep JPL's top brass out. Continue with this story to learn more. |
For a relatively paltry $10 million, the agency obtained last Saturday the
best comet photos in history. That's the price tag for two years worth of "extended mission" budgeting for Deep Space 1, the crippled probe that sent back a handful of unexpected postcards of comet Borrelly during a fly-by that wasn't originally planned and might easily have never happened.Overnight, thanks to a small but persevering group of engineers, knowledge of comets has doubled, says comet specialist Donald Yeomans of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Space scientists cheered not just the science, but the crafty efforts that kept a hobbling, disoriented probe on the job.
Just wouldn't die
Deep Space 1 monitors stars to keep track of its position and orientation in space. But in November 1999 its star-tracking instrument died. Engineers wrote some new software and sent it to the spacecraft, instructing its science camera to substitute as a star tracker. Twice since then intense solar storms flooded the camera with radiation and the spacecraft lost its way. In each case, engineers managed to help it recover.
The pictures of comet Borrelly were made by the same camera that had to keep watch on guide stars -- a scheme that might easily have failed.
But it worked, and it worked in a huge way, adding Deep Space 1 to a long list of NASA craft that just wouldn't die.
Just seven months ago, the NEAR spacecraft made a wildly unexpected and bonus
asteroid landing that scientists also cheered -- again not just for the bravado of the effort but for the precious data collected, said to be 10 times more than planned on a budget of $223 million. The craft was not designed to land -- it had no legs -- and had been given a 1 percent chance of surviving. But the successful touchdown made it inevitable that NASA would extend the mission so measurements collected on the surface -- a first for asteroid science -- could be downloaded. The effort has helped scientists characterize the type of rock Eros is, and the extended mission, while now over, is still generating
new scientific findings. Four decades of overtime
While NASA has suffered
plenty of disasters throughout its 43-year history, these sorts of extra-inning successes are nothing new, either."It has been true for spacecraft all the way back to the Pioneer program," says Michael A'Hearn, a University of Maryland astronomer who will manage NASA's
Deep Impact mission, scheduled to launch in 2004 and slam a probe into a comet in order to explore what comes out.A'Hearn says NASA's knack for getting a big bang from a few extended-mission bucks is due to many factors, from dependable spacecraft to sheer serendipity to long-distance recovery efforts.
In the extended mission category, Pioneer and Voyager have made the Energizer Bunny look like a Prozac junkie.
During the Apollo moon landings, NASA used a fleet of Pioneer probes to provide hourly updates on the Suns potentially deadly activity. Pioneer 6, originally expected to operate for six months, was still going 35 years later when
contacted by NASA in 2000. It is thought to be still alive -- the oldest active spacecraft out there.Pioneer 11, launched in 1973, made the first direct observations of Saturn in 1979. Two decades after launch, it was studying energetic particles in the outer heliosphere where the Sun's influence slams into interstellar space. It was last heard from in 1995.
Voyager 1, meanwhile, is still reporting back to mission control and is
about to leave the solar system to become humanity's first interstellar messenger. Launched in 1977, Voyager obtained pictures that changed not just our view of the solar system but of our place in the cosmos.With a little luck
Galileo, a probe sent in 1989 to study Jupiter and its moons, could be considered the king of cosmic serendipity.
Five years after Galileo launched, a comet was discovered and determined to be on a collision course with Jupiter. En route to the giant planet, Galileo got the only direct view of the collisions of fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on the dark side of the Jupiter in July of 1994.
Since then, Galileo revealed what is almost certainly a vast ocean under the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. And it delivered a probe that measured Jupiter's atmosphere from within. NASA often rewards success. In March, Galileo got is
third mission extension, a budget of $9 million to continue studying Jupiter's moons.Many other spacecraft have struggled and stumbled in the harsh environs of space and survived. But Deep Space 1 may have set a new standard for recovering from injury and continuing to play.
When optimism ran low
Approaching the Sept. 22 comet Borrelly encounter with just drops of fuel remaining, Deep Space 1 sped toward its target with its camera doubling as a star tracker. The craft had no shielding to protect it against comet dust, which engineers feared might destroy the craft.
Optimism ran low. Just days before the fly-by, mission manager Marc Raman told SPACE.com, "The encounter simply may not work."
But it did work, and in a post-mission interview Rayman said that despite high hopes, his confidence had been so low that he discouraged visitors to the control room during the fly-by so he would "be prepared to deal promptly and efficiently with all sorts of problems."
Yet there were a handful of important people Rayman couldn't keep out. Like his bosses. JPL Director
Charles Elachi was in the control room when the first images arrived. So was Eugene Tattini, the incoming deputy director. As was Larry Dumas, whom Tattini will replace. When the images rolled in, American flags went up and a sustained applause ensued.Elachi is said to have called NASA chief Dan Goldin to tell him the good news. A welcome antidote to
recent blunders, no doubt.Two dismal failures in 1999 -- mission disasters that industry leaders accept as the price of venturing off the planet -- have cast a pall of uncertainty over efforts to rejuvenate NASA in the face of budgets that may never again reach the levels of the Apollo era.
Blame it on the budget?
Mars Climate Orbiter was lost while trying to go into orbit around the Red Planet in 1999. The cause? A human mixup between metric and English units.
A few months later, the Mars Polar Lander failed to reach the Red Planet's surface. The craft may have falsely thought it was on the ground and shut down its engines too soon, leading to a mission-ending crash, analysts say.
Much of the blame for these failures fell on the shoulders of a decade-long effort to streamline NASA missions, to move from a few large missions to several smaller ones. The sea change is embodied in the agency's 1990s-era motto "faster, better, cheaper."
And while it might be tempting to suggest Deep Space 1 and NEAR have shown that faster, better, cheaper works, JPL's Rayman, who led the Deep Space 1 team, says only a more detailed analysis -- perhaps after more missions have succeeded or failed -- will tell.
"A few successes no more validate a new approach than a few losses invalidate it," he said.
Yet it has become clear that low-cost, daring missions can generate unexpected cheap thrills -- comet flybys and asteroid landings -- and also do great science. Faster, better, cheaper can work. As one JPL official put it, managers just have to make sure efforts to fly inexpensively don't compromise mission safety.
Deep Space 1's original price tag was just $152 million. Rayman said that adjusting for inflation, this is the lowest-cost interplanetary mission NASA has ever conducted. And the craft took what was to be a test drive for a fancy
ion engine and some autopilot software and turned it into a long-distance research bonanza that will reverberate through the halls of comet science for years to come.A sad goodbye
Even the best missions come to an end, however. Deep Space 1 will go through
some rigorous engine testing in coming weeks and, if it survives, be set adrift by late November. All communications will cease.With Voyager 1 still going after 35 years, one has to wonder: Couldn't Deep Space 1 be reoriented for one more task, maybe even another flyby?
"The solar system is a big place," says Rayman. "And it's not as easy as you might think to just turn left at the comet and head over to the second asteroid on the right." He adds that there is almost no fuel left to maneuver the craft anyway.
But it must be heart-wrenching to pay last rites.
"Sure, it will feel sad to say goodbye, but it has exceeded everyone's expectations," Rayman said. "She's been a good ship, and she'll always be fondly remembered."
Especially for those really cool postcards.
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