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The end of Herschel

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    #2
    Capt'n Midnight
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 91,409 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    any idea what temperature the detector will settle at without cooling and what use it would be with that level of noise ?

    No warm mission :(
    and some stuff on deciding what observations get priority
    [edit] http://herschel.esac.esa.int
    (there is no "warm" Herschel mission)

    still what could it detect ?

    any use in looking at the far side of the moon from L2 once a month ?


    Any chance of a resupply mission , or is it far more complicated than that ?


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    #3
    AlmightyCushion
    Moderators, Education Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 35,076 Mod ✭✭✭✭AlmightyCushion


    Capt'n Midnight wrote: »
    Any chance of a resupply mission , or is it far more complicated than that ?

    Even if it was easy to replace the coolant, it's about 1.5 million KM away. That's about 4 times the distance to the moon so I can't see it happening. Do we have anything that is capable of getting anywhere near that distance and back? Even if we did, cost and safety would probably be a huge factor against.


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    #4
    Capt'n Midnight
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 91,409 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    AlmightyCushion wrote: »
    Even if it was easy to replace the coolant, it's about 1.5 million KM away. That's about 4 times the distance to the moon so I can't see it happening. Do we have anything that is capable of getting anywhere near that distance and back? Even if we did, cost and safety would probably be a huge factor against.
    the original mission cost a LOT, it's just to see if for a tiny fraction of that cost it's worth keeping it going.

    safety is easy, robot

    1.5M Km - it's only a little further than GEO in terms of delta-V

    It depends on what sort of filling valve they used when it was made



    It's 300 odd Kg of Helium + container + delivery system so not a huge launch system , time isn't critical so you could use hall effect thruster from LEO to keep the mass down


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    #5
    Capt'n Midnight
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 91,409 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    GAME OVER. :(

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21934520
    Controllers at the European Space Agency's (Esa) operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany, will run some final tests on the spacecraft in the coming weeks before putting it in a slow drift around the Sun.

    "We will push it out into a heliocentric orbit and passivate it," said Micha Schmidt, the Herschel spacecraft operations manager.

    "We will switch off the transponder and the spacecraft will go silent."

    Herschel should not come anywhere near the Earth again for several hundred years.
    ...


    "But the amazing thing about Herschel is that its maximum productivity in science terms probably won't be reached for another five years yet," said Prof Matt Griffin, the principal investigator on Herschel's Spire instrument.


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