They can go to the moon but their telephoto lenses still need some work.
yitbos
Posted on 09/02/2006 11:16:44 PM PDT by saganite
Europe's lunar satellite, the Smart 1 probe, has ended its mission by crashing onto the Moon's surface.
It was a spectacular end for the robotic probe, which has spent the last 16 months testing innovative and miniaturised space technologies.
Smart 1 has also produced detailed maps of the Moon's chemical make-up, to help refine theories about its birth.
At about 0542 GMT (0642 BST), the probe crashed into a volcanic plain called the Lake of Excellence.
With an impact speed of about 7,200km/h (4,500mph), even at an expected glancing blow of just one degree to the surface, the probe should have met a sufficiently violent end for astronomers to observe the event from Earth.
It is possible telescopes will have seen fresh lunar "soil", or regolith, kicked up in the crash. They may even detect a thermal flash as volatile materials on the probe melt some of its structure. The impact was expected to leave a 3m by 10m crater on the Moon's surface.
"As planned, Smart 1 has landed," said Professor Bernard Foing, the mission's project scientist from the European Space Agency (Esa).
Gerhard Schwehm, Smart 1 mission manager, said: "Everything worked up until the end, so it was a wonderful mission and a big success. Our spacecraft provided a lot of new information."
A fleet of spacecraft - both orbiters and landers - are now expected to visit the Moon in the next few years.
This train of robotic explorers will culminate in US space explorers returning to the lunar surface for the first time since the Apollo missions, probably in 2020.
Smart 1 was launched in September 2003 as a technology demonstrator.
It became Europe's first space science mission to use an ion engine instead of chemical combustion to reach its destination.
The system draws power through the probe's solar wings and then uses this energy to propel the spacecraft forward by expelling charged particles of xenon. It was highly efficient, covering 100 million km in a series of looping orbits and using just 60 litres of "fuel".
An ion engine will now be fitted to the majority of Europe's future spacecraft, such as the BepiColumbo mission to Mercury. It has made mineral maps of the Moon's composition, looking at the distribution of calcium, magnesium, aluminium, silicon and iron.
"You won't see any pictures coming straight through as we head towards the ground. But when we finally put the picture together what we will get is maps of what the Moon is made of."
Professor Grande has been principal investigator on one of Smart's miniaturised instruments: the compact X-ray spectrometer known as D-CIXS.
It has made mineral maps of the Moon's composition, looking at the distribution of calcium, magnesium, aluminium, silicon and iron.
Knowing the absolute abundances of these elements will help to refine theories for the Moon's formation. These describe the satellite emerging from the debris thrown out from a mighty collision between Earth and a Mars-sized body billions of years ago.
"Smart 1 will now rest in peace on the Moon," said Professor Foing.
"We are now collaborating with the international community, preparing the way for the future exploration of the Moon - the next fleet of orbiters, landers; leading to robotic villages and human bases."
Guess it wasn't that smart...
That was just too easy.
Cleanup on aisle seven...
Or, in pieces, maybe...
These jokes just write themselves, huh...
Yep, as I said, it's too damn easy. I mean... the odds of a complete mission failure are pretty high on these kind of things. So, one would *think* these guys would think about naming these things in way/writing about it that it wouldn't be like shootin' fish in the barrel disparaging their 'provess'.
Euro weenies polluting the moon with debris.
Euro weenies polluting the moon with debris.
or altering the Moons magnetic pull
They actually programmed it to crash into the moon at the completion of a completely successful mission.
Let me get this straight, a "landing" leaves a crater on the moon. If that's the case than we haven't had many airplane crashes.
The probe was never intended to "land" on the moon. Chalk that poor choice of words up to bad reporting or misinterpretation. ESA decided to use the last of it's fuel at the end of it's mission to crash the probe onto the moon. The mission was a total unqualified success.
Sure it was a success, this was all done because this probe had evidence the moon landings never happened so Karl Rove arranged it so it would crash into the moon.
Karl is busy with the hurricane machine. Must've been Cheney, the sorcerer's apprentice.
They can go to the moon but their telephoto lenses still need some work.
yitbos
Where'd you get those pics?
They've still got a long way to go before they catch up with the volume left behind by six LEMs. Not to mention that only one country has cluttered the lunar surface with all those footprints and flags (and the occasional golf ball).
As one of my aquaintances from Romania who defected to the US said when asked why he did it. "I wanted to live in the only country on Earth who had taken a $#!+ on the moon. I guess that about sums it up.
But we had a whole lot of unmanned aerial devices that made successful "landings" in Iraq.
Smart 1 successfully finished its mission, the last act of which was to hit as hard and kick up as much ejecta as possible. If it kicked enough dust where the right instruments could see it, a lot of good science could come out of that impact. Don't forget, NASA sent a probe out for the sole purpose of smacking into a comet at full speed, which it did.
If anyone comes across photo's of ground telescopes detecting the crash let me know!
Well, that wasn't very green of them.
There ain't no green on the moon. Maybe that wasn't very brown of them?
Congratulations, seriously.
Good science. I didn't read the entire article, but was encouraged by the apparent performance of the "Ion Engine". Was there a price tag disclosed for the mission somewhere therein?
It was an ESA probe so I didn't look for a cost. The ion engine tested fine as did the US ion engine on deep space 1 and I believe the Japanese have tested an ion engine. There are already improvements in the works that will more than double, even triple the efficiency of the current ion engines.
I thought the moon was white.
That's really cool (forgive my excessively-formal semantics). Perhaps an imaginative team of engineers will send a circumsolar ion-engined well-instrumented hunk of expensive junk out to, say, something recognizable beyond the ecliptic and back.
Catching a little dust could be just a bit helpful in that department, couldn't it?
Your sarcasm is noted.
Actually, they just crash-landed it on a secret soundstage and then told us they crashed it on the Moon. </conspiracy>
I really wasn't kidding.
Shoot the damn thing toward the sun, angle it inward, and let the solar gravity shoot the thing outward towards stuff that is near, but not necessarily within the scope of Sol's gravitational field. Put enough gas in the thing to return it to splash down in the Pacific about forty years from now or so.
Smart one was an ESA probe. Take a look at deep space one if you want to see an ambitious mission for an ion engine. It was a proving run for the ion engine as well and the results were outstanding.
My usage of the word "junk", I think, is what made my original sound sarcastic. Wasn't meant that way at all.
Hell, if ion engines can be recharged by solar radiation, you've cut costs for science by orders of magnitude - enough for, say, a proprietary atmospheric study of Venus with a big Archer Daniel Midland logo on the side of the thing.
Which is good. Imagine just having to pay for a ballistic "permit" and sending whatever the hell instruments you want "out there".
Please excuse my ignorance, but you seem knowledgeable bout this...What type of 60 L fuel are they using to create Xe? thanks.
They can't be "recharged" by solar energy. They just use the electricity generated to convert the fuel into ionized gas that propels the craft. Ion engines, on the other hand can do as much as chemical propulsion on 10% of the propellant. The drawback is that they're veeery slow to accelerate. They can either use the weight savings for more propellant to go further or use the weight savings to add more instrumentation. The solar powered version works fine as long as it's close enough to the sun but as it gets farther out it needs another power source, say nuclear.
Fine with me. Engineer expensive, heavy, double-redundant systems in the initial vehicles and once someone realizes Return On Investment, Moore's Law (or some variant) will kick in.
Ethanol grown in space! [slight sarcasm, I think]
Moore's law is already kicking in. The Australians have already designed an Ion engine 10 times more fuel efficient than the one on smart 1.
Okay, you've mentioned ESA, the Japanese, and now the Australians. Am I missing something here, or is it latent xenophobia?
The Australians haven't launched anything but a design group there working for ESA has improved the ion engine design. So far as I know the US and Europe are the only ones to launch an ion engined probe and the Japanese are working on it.
Xenon is the fuel carried onboard. Not sure what your reference to 60 L fuel means as far as what's onboard the craft.
When I delivered mail at ORNL, one of the guys who worked in the military robotics division was named Borg. Of course, if you've never watched Star Trek, The Next Generation, that might not mean anything.
"I meant to do that."
But, but, I thought our manned moon trips brought this stuff back. Also, did this satellite get a photo of the planted U.S. flag in it's almost one year of recon of the moon?
Everybody knows it's GREEN CHEESE you dumb EU ying-yangs!!! (expletive deleted)
The Apollo astronauts weren't using jackhammers. A hard impact leaving a deep crater and kicking up a lot of debris could tell us a lot about the material a few layers down. What is the importance of that? Beats me. I'm a political science major, for crying out loud. The fact that I know that there is a moon, and that it's not made of cheese, probably puts me ahead of the curve for my cohort.
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