Malfunction Ends $80-Million Space Mission Before It Begins
NASA lost its struggle to save a malfunctioning $80-million satellite Monday after the errant spacecraft leaked so much coolant that it could not carry out its astronomy mission, space agency officials said.
The incident is the most serious in a series of technical difficulties NASA has encountered recently with its space probes, ranging from problems with experimental propulsion systems and a missed asteroid rendezvous, to momentary malfunctions of on-board computers and scientific instruments.
Launched last week from Vandenberg Air Force Base, the Wide-Field Infrared Explorer or WIRE satellite was designed to study the earliest moments of the universe to better understand how galaxies were born. But shortly after the craft reached orbit, a tracking station discovered that it was spinning out of control.
Scientists at Caltech’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, which was managing science operations for the satellite, had expected to spend the next four months analyzing a wealth of new information about how the bright light of stars was first kindled in the universe.
Instead, for the last four days, they have waited helplessly as the craft’s supply of frozen hydrogen--essentially the lifeblood of its infrared telescope--boiled away into space, while mission engineers at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Maryland tried without success to bring the spacecraft back under control.
Late Monday afternoon, NASA officials confirmed their worst fears: The scientific mission was over before it could begin.
“Everyone is in a state of shock,” said center Director Charles Beichman. “We could have made some spectacular advances in understanding the early evolution of galaxies very quickly for modest cost. All that is now gone.
“Clearly there are people who had planned their career around the idea this new data would make them the toast of conferences around the world and that is not going to happen,” Beichman said. “Despite the best efforts of everybody, something has gone wrong.”
The satellite carried aloft an unusually sensitive, $21-million infrared telescope enclosed in a 4-foot, thermos-like container that also housed a hydrogen-ice cooling system. The ice was meant to chill the telescope to minus 430 degrees Fahrenheit--cold enough so that the heat of the telescope’s operation would not interfere with its ability to detect the radiation lingering from the formation of the universe.
When the Air Force’s North American Air Defense Command in Colorado used its radar to look at the spacecraft after the launch, it detected a small object in orbit near the satellite and its third-stage booster, space agency officials said. Engineers think the object might be a hatch cover that shielded the telescope. The cover, which was held to the satellite by explosive bolts, might have blown off three days ahead of schedule.
As a result, sunlight heated up the hydrogen ice, spacecraft controllers at Goddard said Monday, and the vaporized hydrogen vented into space, acting as a powerful rocket jet forceful enough to override efforts to stabilize the spacecraft. By Monday so much hydrogen had been lost that the telescope could not operate.
“We are very disappointed at the loss of WIRE’s science program,” said Ed Weiler, NASA’s associate administrator for space science in Washington. “I am confident that many of the scientific goals can be accomplished by upcoming missions such as the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, so it will be science delayed rather than science lost.”
NASA officials said they still have hopes of stabilizing the spacecraft by the end of this week, even though it is now too late to salvage its astronomy mission.
The agency has appointed a panel to investigate the mishap.
About 20 of the center’s 200 scientists and engineers at Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory were involved in the project. They most likely will be reassigned to the upcoming $450-million space telescope mission, which the center will also manage, Beichman said.
