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PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — A $75 million NASA spacecraft designed to study solar flares was heavily damaged when engineers mistakenly shook it 10 times harder than intended during a preflight test.
The shaking cracked at least two of four solar panels on the High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager, and tests were planned to find internal damage. Launch, which had been scheduled for July, will be pushed back at least to January.
It's the latest embarrassment for the space agency and Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which last year lost two high-profile missions to Mars. The cause of the mishap was still under investigation, JPL spokeswoman Mary Beth Murrill said Thursday.
JPL engineers were performing tests on a shake table Tuesday to ensure the probe could withstand twice the force of gravity, which it would experience during launch. Instead, it was subjected to 20 times the force of gravity for about 200 milliseconds.
"The folks who were involved in the test are mystified at this point,'' said Larry Dumas, JPL's deputy director. "There's no obvious reason that's presented itself (for the unexpected shaking).''
The 850-pound HESSI probe is designed to explore the basic physics of particle acceleration and the energy release of solar flares from an orbit of 360 miles above Earth. It's not clear whether any of the scientific instruments were damaged.
HESSI's engineers were confident that the spacecraft can be saved, said Mark Hess, spokesman for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, which is managing the mission.
"It continued to function even through the test,'' he said. "We know there are structural and other elements of the satellite that are still working.''
NASA will appoint a review board to investigate the mishap — just as it did twice last year after the Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander losses.
Investigators later found Climate Orbiter mission failed because critical navigation units were not translated into metric. Polar Lander's review board is expected to make its findings public next week.
HESSI's mishap disappointed dozens of scientists who have been working on the project for more than two years.
The satellite was being tested at JPL because of the lab's proximity to Gilbert, Ariz.-based Spectrum Astro, where it was built, and the University of California, Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory, where its primary science team is based.
"To have it damaged in a test at JPL is a bitter blow for us,'' Dumas said.
"And I'm sure even more difficult for the folks at Goddard, Berkeley and
Spectrum Astro who have worked so hard on this mission.''
When it rains.....
Have we heard other bad news from JPL lately?
Sabotage? Sure gonna make a lot of people think we ought to get rid of NASA. Hell sell it to China and get it over with.
I broke my VCR that way.
Columbia, MO
Well, let's get some entertainment value out of it. I'll start.
NASA
Need
Another
Seven
Astronauts
(post Challenger)
Never
A
Straight
Answer
Next?
We don't call 'em rocket scientists for nothin'...
They're making way too much of this. It's space science. Of course they occasionally break stuff. This sounds like an honest accident of the sort that probably happens every day. It's only because of this week's earlier story that we're even hearing about it...
Companies Want to Reduce Cow Flatulence, see NASA Engineers Break $75 mil Satellite --- these two were made for each other.
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — A $75 million NASA spacecraft designed to study solar flares was heavily damaged when engineers mistakenly shook it 10 times harder than intended during a preflight test.
The head of testing wasn't Louise Woodward, by any chance?
"Faster, Better Cheaper" to which I say, "You get what you pay for".
congress ought to trash nasa and start over. it's one thing after another. also, nasa lies to the american people.
JPL engineers were performing tests on a shake table Tuesday to ensure the probe could withstand twice the force of gravity, which it would experience during launch. Instead, it was subjected to 20 times the force of gravity for about 200 milliseconds. "The folks who were involved in the test are mystified at this point,'' said Larry Dumas, JPL's deputy director. "There's no obvious reason that's presented itself (for the unexpected shaking).''
Oops. I would sure think twice before climbing onboard the shuttle if these are the "rocket scientists" you are dealing with.
I have a good buddy who is program manager at JPL, and I know he is going to have a crappy day tomorrow. He was involved in the Hubble when the ground the primaryb mirror to the wrong specs. The mistake wasn't found until after it was up because NASA did not want to spend the money on a full integrated test.
These guys have been cutting corners all together too long and the problems just keep rolling in faster and faster. They have got just too many things going on and need to cut back on the number of projects and focus on the big things like the space station and setting up a moon base. Instead they are being forced to spend money on never ending studies to prove global warming and find ET.
Regards
Boiler Plate
NASA has no mission. Mothball the fleet.
Oppsie daisy
By a factor of TEN??? Hmmmm...didn't they get conversions wrong in one of them Mars missions??? Remember the units! ;o)
20 gees for .2 seconds is not much of a shock
Guess it wasn't much of a satellite.
Sure they have a mission. Since the end of the Appolo flights the mission has been to act as a political show piece for whomever is in power at the time.
Apollo-Soyuz = a real highlight of the Race to Space
Now
Another
Stupid
Accident
my understanding is that as congress de-funds nasa, nasa becomes more and more black ops--the province of the military.
This may not be too popular, but I don't give a Rat's hind end about the friggin' silly ass space program. Every time they light the fuse on their damned space shuttle there goes a BILLION DOLLARS! That's One Thousand Million dollars! How many small business loans would that make? How many houses would that build? How many useful purposes would that money serve? We keep dumping money into this program so that a bunch of clowns can have unlimited taxpayers money to squander on outer space. Who gives a crap about outer space? Tell me why my town doesn't even have a fire dept? When we get the USA fixed up then we can worry about friggin Mars!
"They're making way too much of this. It's space science. Of course they occasionally break stuff. This sounds like an honest accident of the sort that probably happens every day. "
As a veteren of NASA from back in the days when we COULD get probes to Mars in one piece, I can assure you that you are quite wrong. We did not see these types or rates of failures during Viking, Voyager, Surveyor, Lunar Orbiter, Pioneer, etc.
Then the "new" NASA came along. The scientists were no longer in charge. Business people were put in charge, people with MBAs and no idea of what space travel is all about. They are great at counting dollars but they can't walk down to the vehicle assembly buildilng and look at a spacecraft and know whether what they are seeing is correct or not. So, just to show they were really the boss they tossed out the "meatball" logo and brought in the NASA "worm". Really important stuff, that. The results of replacing space scientists with business managers have been catastrophic. The Space Telescope was launched with an out-of-focus mirror, because a ground test that showed the problem was discarded in favor of another test that did not. Same with Challenger. The scientists who actually made the SRBs recommended against a launch, but the NON-scientist managers went ahead anyway.
NASA's current performance is pure crap compared to the days before the "new" NASA managers came on board.
"Of course they occasionally break stuff. This sounds like an honest accident of the sort that probably happens every day."
I suspect this is actually very rare.
Where I work we "shake" assembled units all the time.
(For aircraft engines, rockets etc.)
these "vibration tables" have to be told how much to "Shake".
Rule of thumb is we "Vibe" units at well beyond anything they could be subjected to even under the most extreme of circumstances.
However, if an operator instructs the test equipment to vibe at say the equivalent of Eighty G's instead of eight, the results are predictable.
We've had a good laugh when examining the results of such misshaps, when cracked open we find everything in tiny, little pieces.
I've only seen this a couple of times over the past 18 years and the 1st thing that comes to mind is " Who's the dumb A** responsible for this?"
Boy...are you ever in the wrong forum!
40 millisecond's was all it took to toast a unit we were testing for the B2 bomber (long ago.)
N oooooo...yet
A nother
S haken Rocket Syndrome
....A gain
We got off cheap when this happened, to the tune of Four hundred and fifty thousand.
I'd have to be the guy who F**ked up a satellite worth 75 mill. Ouch!
Our tech once demonstrated what 50 gees was like. It was almost nothing. A little tap. A drop of a couple inches. It doesn't take much.
Correction, Hate to be. (Still haven't got this typing thing down yet.)
NO obvious reason...
Probably some einstein forgot to convert to metric.
Yes, you are correct. The money, while not significant in nationwide terms, would be better spent in the private sector. If the private sector spent $15 billion a year on space development for the last 2 decades, there would be hundreds of people in space now, some on the moon, and some on Mars, and all turning a hefty profit for their various companies.
To error "is" government workers; to pay "is" the people.
Larry, Larry....come on now...don't you think John Glenn had fun on his last flight? he only thing I can think of that we could use these thing for migt be to get rid of nuclear waste by sending it to the sun or something...of course that might cause lights out.
Somebody should print out Dan Goldin's horoscope; his star appears to have dropped way below the horizon line.
Shall we call the Mars Polar Lander coverup Stargate?
"As a veteren of NASA from back in the days when we COULD get probes to Mars in one piece, I can assure you that you are quite wrong. We did not see these types or rates of failures during Viking, Voyager, Surveyor, Lunar Orbiter, Pioneer, etc."
Really? Perhaps you're right. I just feel sorry for all the folks piling on poor ol' NASA. I'm an old softie at heart...
"The cause of the mishap was still under investigation, JPL spokeswoman Mary Beth Murrill said Thursday"
The investigation is now focused on William 'Butterfingers' MacFumble.
"It continued to function even through the test,'' he said. "We know there are structural and other elements of the satellite that are still working.''
Translation from NASA speak?: The whole thing didn't quite crumble into a million pieces, there were still a couple castings that weren't cracked, and a few parts and dangling wires still attached.
these "vibration tables" have to be told how much to "Shake". Rule of thumb is we "Vibe" units at well beyond anything they could be subjected to even under the most extreme of circumstances. However, if an operator instructs the test equipment to vibe at say the equivalent of Eighty G's instead of eight, the results are predictable.
Folks, the "shake tables" are sophisticated intruments which input a programmed amount of energy over a frequency range into the equipment being tested. They're used for several purposes: finding dangerous resonances, qualifying equipment for its intended environment, and "accelerated testing" to precipitate manufacturing flaws into hard failures before equipment is shipped.
To run one of these correctly, particularly in accelerated testing, takes very careful equipment-specific programming.
Also, NASA may have a range of environmental conditions pre-programmed for different types of equipment testing - i.e. computers at one level, rocket engines at another.
This could quite easily be a case of "You wanted test profile 4013-A? I thought you said 4031-A ! Oh, s**t !"
This is much easier for me to forgive (and understand) than the one where the manager falsified the test results so the equipment would pass.
A $75 million NASA spacecraft designed to study solar flares was heavily damaged when engineers mistakenly shook it 10 times harder than intended during a preflight test.
Did NASA hire Louise Woodward?
NASA does not send money into space. It spends it on earth, mostly in the good ol' USA. If you really want a fire dept in your town talk to billary about the 80 billion dollars trade deficit with China. That would build 16,000 five million dollar fire stations (enough for your town I would think), or 1,600,000 houses that cost $50k. If China gets space superiority over us who do you think will win the war????
SIMPLE________WE DEMAND###### OUR TAX MONEY BAAACKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"Mama,it's not NASA,it's Shake and Break!"
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