![]() When the spacecraft launched, it had a prime mission of only two and a half years. The overall cost of Spitzer, from its initiation to closeout, to NASA is $1.3 billion, Hertz said at the Jan. 30, announcing then a “Final Voyage” phase of the mission. NASA announced in May 2019 that it would end Spitzer Jan. Spitzer cost NASA $11.2 million in fiscal year 2018. NASA later said it received two proposals from organizations who were interested, but who ultimately were not able to come up with the funding needed to operate it. In 2017, NASA officials released a request for information seeking interest in taking over Spitzer operations after an end-of-mission then planned for March 2019. The agency, though, did entertain options to extend the mission further using outside funding. “Some time in the near future, it would have become impossible to operate Spitzer, so we have a planned end to the mission,” Hertz said. When NASA delayed the launch of JWST to 2021, the agency decided to extend Spitzer, but only to 2020, citing the growing complications of operating the spacecraft. NASA originally planned to shut down Spitzer by early 2019, a decision made when the James Webb Space Telescope was set to launch in the fall of 2018 and thus allow for a transition. “But it is becoming increasingly more difficult to operate and more risky to operate.” “There’s not a hard cutoff as to when it’s not possible to operate Spitzer,” he added, noting that the telescope was still working well. ![]() 23 meeting of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee. “The angle between the Earth, sun and Spitzer makes it so that it’s very difficult to point the solar panels at the sun, to point the antenna at the Earth, to point the telescope where you want it look and to keep the sun from shining in the wrong places and warming the telescope up,” said Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s astrophysics division, during a Jan. ![]() Over time, though, the spacecraft has drifted far enough from the Earth - it is now more than 250 million kilometers away - that it has becoming increasingly difficult to operate the spacecraft effectively. NASA selected that orbit to minimize the infrared radiation from the Earth that would make it difficult for the spacecraft to perform its observations. Spitzer launched in August 2003 into an orbit around the sun that causes the spacecraft to gradually drift away from the Earth. “There’s nothing out there for Spitzer to crash into,” he said. He added there is no need to “passivate” the spacecraft like Earth-orbiting spacecraft at their end of their missions, which usually involves discharging batteries and venting propellants to eliminate any energy sources that could cause an explosion that would create debris that, in Earth orbit, would be a hazard. Spitzer, he said, will be put into a “sun-coning attitude” where it will remain permanently. ![]() “On the 30th, we’re going to put Spitzer into a hibernation mode,” said Joseph Hunt, project manager for the Spitzer Space Telescope, during a NASA Television event about the end of the mission Jan. Controllers will then effectively turn off the spacecraft, ending a mission that started with its launch in 2003. 29, the Spitzer Space Telescope will transmit the last of the science data that the spacecraft has collected. WASHINGTON - NASA will turn off an aging infrared space telescope in a week, citing the complexities of continuing to operate the spacecraft as it drifts away from the Earth. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |