Re: A few Cassini questions
From: Christopher M. Jones (marmiteNOTSPAM_at_dualboot.net)
Date: 06/23/04
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Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 00:17:22 -0500
Keith F. Lynch wrote:
> Henry Spencer <henry@spsystems.net> wrote:
>
>>Barring major spacecraft failures, I'd say it's almost certain that
>>the mission will eventually be ended by doing something spectacular
>>and fatal, to definitively terminate the mission (and its operations
>>budget) on a high note.
>
> Unfortunate, since it precludes someday recovering the spacecraft and
> putting it in a museum. And in the shorter term, what if something
> spectacular like the crash of that comet into Jupiter were about to
> happen at Saturn, but Cassini had been deliberately destroyed a few
> months earlier?
This is an especially good point for several reasons.
First, Cassini is in much, much better shape than
Galileo was at the same time in its mission. Cassini,
for example, is not significantly crippled as Galileo
was. Second, Saturn does not have near the radiation
environment that Jupiter has, which will further tend
to keep Cassini in good shape. Third, Cassini's basic
subsystems should be able to survive as long as other
similar interplanetary spacecraft, such as the Voyagers
or Pioneers. Perhaps longer, as Cassini's designs
favor solid state systems. Fourth, unlike Galileo,
Cassini's basic control systems should be in good enough
shape to trust letting it stay around a while, provided
you don't do anything to damage them, and still have the
opportunity to do a Saturn dive at the actual end of the
spacecraft's useful life, should that merit serious
concern (personally I don't think it does). Given all
this there's a good case to be made for putting Cassini
in a high Saturnian orbit and a low-maintenance
quasi-sleep configuration for an extended period of time.
It could then be used for occasional imagery of Saturn
or the Moons (probably the engineers could come up with
the command sets, at considerable cost savings) to monitor
long term changes, and it could be pulled out of
retirement for a brief period if anything interesting
looked likely to happen, such as an impact or dramatic
weather changes on Saturn or Titan.
Note that this is hardly unprecedented, as it has been
done with several spacecraft in the past.
There's little reason to suppose that Cassini can't still
be around as long as Voyager has been. Which would be
nice, I think, because it would sort of morph into this
long lived deep space "asset" like MGS or SOHO has. I
think it's past time we stopped looking at interplanetary
space as something we venture into rarely and briefly and
instead look at it as a place we can go to and stay.
There is little merit in the idea of junking Cassini and
there is great potential benefit of keeping it around as
long as possible.
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