Good to the last drop

[astroron (Ron)]

NASA's Star Dust Space craft has finished it's final mission and and has been officially switched off.
http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov/
Cheers

[CraigS]

Hmm .. I read that NASA's WISE telescope has taken its last measurement, too … decommissioned on February 17, 2011, when its transmitter was turned off.

Two old timers taken off line at around the same time !!


Yep … Ned Wright performed the Undertaker duties..

17 February 2011 — WISE Spacecraft transmitter turned at 12:00 noon PST by Principal Investigator Ned Wright. The Spacecraft will remain in hibernation without ground contacts awaiting possible future use.

Cheers

[astroron (Ron)]

Originally Posted by CraigS

Hmm .. I read that NASA's WISE telescope has taken its last measurement, too … decommissioned on February 17, 2011, when its transmitter was turned off.

Two old timers taken off line at around the same time !!


Yep … Ned Wright performed the Undertaker duties..

17 February 2011 — WISE Spacecraft transmitter turned at 12:00 noon PST by Principal Investigator Ned Wright. The Spacecraft will remain in hibernation without ground contacts awaiting possible future use.

Cheers

Both space craft did sterling work, and are a credit to the scientist and their makers
Cheers

[CraigS]

Originally Posted by astroron

Both space craft did sterling work, and are a credit to the scientist and their makers
Cheers

Yes Ron;

From the report you posted:

"When we take into account all the possibilities for how long the burn could be and then the possible post-burn trajectories, we project that over the next 100 years, Stardust will not get any closer than 1.7 million miles of Earth's orbit, or within 13 million miles of Mars orbit," said Larson. "That is far enough from protected targets to meet all of NASA's Planetary Protection directives."

Looks like they had to do the burn to get it into a "Planetary Protective" orbit !

Can't see why else they would have taken this path .. the cited reason was to see what would happen when they run the tanks dry, but that seems a bit hard to swallow ?

Cheers

[steve000 (Steve)]

that's quite sad, bought a tear to my eye.