Mirror Jams on Venus Express Spacecraft 31
tsarina writes "The European Space Agency is trying to fix a stuck instrument on its Venus Express spacecraft. A mirror in front of its interferometer is not pointing in the right direction, making it useless until it is moved. Managers hope to fix the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer this week. An identical instrument on the Mars Express probe has also acted up, but it is currently working properly.""
Obligatory Wiki Link (Score:1, Informative)
You can see that it analyses the atmosphere from the ground to 100km, but is only one of about 7 instruments.
Oh yeah, and first post.
You could... (Score:5, Funny)
Alternatively, run it under some hot water for a few seconds.
If all else fails, give it a good swift kick.
Re:You could... (Score:2)
Re:You could... (Score:2)
Don't you remember, that if you have problems with your
interferometer mirror, you put it in the FREEZER
for a few hours, take it out and stand it on its
side, and you should be able to coax some usefulness
out of it.
Or maybe that was something else...
Re:You could... (Score:1)
Re:You could... (Score:2)
BTW, if this failed, we were to turn them on their side, one specific edge down, and rap it hard on a tab
Re:You could... (Score:2)
Re:You could... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:With the string of bad luck the ESA has had, (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:With the string of bad luck the ESA has had, (Score:2)
Re:With the string of bad luck the ESA has had, (Score:5, Informative)
I work in the flight dynamics team for VenusExpress at ESA and I can't let this comment stand. Even though the poster meant it as a joke (I hope ;), I don't think having smarter people is the issue. I think it is a matter of experience and money.
We are just beginning to expand beyond near-earth to the interplanetary part of space exploration. VenusExpress is only our fourth interplanetary mission (we count going to the moon as interplanetary). Nonethless, we've arrived at Venus without any problems in the spacecraft systems (this excludes instruments). We've reached our target orbit to within 0.3 seconds (sic!). We only could do this by applying what we'd learned on the previous missions; Smart-1, Rosetta, and MarsExpress.
As for money, our budget is a tenth of NASA's budget. To save cost, VenusExpress was basically built from MarsExpress spare parts. This brings a few problems with it, due to the different geometries: Venus being so much closer to the Sun than Mars, and being inside Earth's orbit poses a whole new set of thermal problems.
Re:With the string of bad luck the ESA has had, (Score:3, Interesting)
What do they use to flip a mirror in place(switch back from a calibration lamp)? These movable things are often used in other missions and it's good to know what type of hardware would malfunction like this.
Re:With the string of bad luck the ESA has had, (Score:1)
oh GREAT! (Score:1)
If YOU have the friggin manual HERE, how the hell are the VENUSIANS supposed to figure out how fix the friggin' mirror THERE?!?!
Re:With the string of bad luck the ESA has had, (Score:1)
XMM Newton, Mars Express and Venus Express, even considering this glitch, have all done very well.
Their program is following the robotic rather than manned approach to exploration, as has been suggested by many scientests. They are getting a lot more science for their buck (or Euro).
ESA, as opposed to NASA, has put scientific objectives first rather than political ones.
Re:With the string of bad luck the ESA has had, (Score:1)
The CSA could help here (Score:5, Funny)
Note - The above post is humorous in content, and does not intend to violate patents past or present on the "Design and Implementation of Remote Digit Activation Devices"
Spaceballs... (Score:2)
Re:Spaceballs... (Score:1)
Re:Spaceballs... (Score:2)
Should take a trick from NASA's playbook (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Should take a trick from NASA's playbook (Score:3, Funny)
Re: Should take a trick from NASA's playbook (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, the moon missions would never have been possible if they hadn't kept everything on the ground in Arizona.