3 ms·
To answer three of your questions: - It is passively cooled rather than using an expendable coolant- "SPHEREx relies on an entirely passive cooling system — no
by niwtsol 2y ago
To answer three of your questions:
- It is passively cooled rather than using an expendable coolant- "SPHEREx relies on an entirely passive cooling system — no electricity or coolants are used, simplifying the spacecraft’s design and operational needs."
- It is a Medium-Class Explorers (MIDEX) mission - Investigations characterized by definition, development, mission operations, and data analysis costs not to exceed $180 to $200 million total cost to NASA.
I think the cost of ground support eats into the budget length. The original estimate for project was $241M, so it was a large MIDEX
- It is in a Polar orbit around Earth at the day-night (terminator) line
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/press-kits/spherex/ https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/press-kits/spherex/
https://explorers.gsfc.nasa.gov/missions.html https://explorers.gsfc.nasa.gov/missions.html
https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/02/14/nasa-selects-mission-to-probe-the-history-of-galaxies/ https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/02/14/nasa-selects-mission-t...
- dylan604 2y agoah, I misread the Orbital Parameters on the wiki. that day-night orbit is also a LEO which makes it even more possible to do a manned mission for upgrades. Oh, wait, we no longer have a shuttle for those types of missions.
- nine_k 2y agoEven a Dragon could bring enough hardware and a crew for a small upgrade or repair (to say nothing of the upcoming Starship).
- ericcumbee 2y agoDragon lacks a Remote Manipulator System (Robot Arm) and a airlock. things that make servicing objects in space a lot easier. Im sure somewhere at NASA or SpaceX there is rough set of specs on what a shuttle like starship would look like complete with payload bay, robot arm, and eva airlock.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoThe complete specs of the arm may now belong to a hostile nation.
- totetsu 2y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm# https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm#
- Frederation 2y agoA nation pushing back against the morons in Washington. Hardly hostile. Unless you poke the bear.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoI think it would be more rightfully described as poking the beaver
- Frederation 2y agoTouché!
- dylan604 2y agoIf you're alluding to Russia, they've had them. They even failed in making their version of a shuttle. With what money would they do anything with now? If you're alluding to China, they probably had the data from the Russians anyways. Otherwise, I'm out of guesses to your vagueness.
- taggart 2y agoCanada built the shuttle arms: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm
- sillywalk 2y ago> They even failed in making their version of a shuttle. Nitpick: It was sort of successful. They built a shuttle, and it successfully flew a single (un-crewed) mission of a couple orbits. The collapse of the USSR / lack of funding killed it.
- nick12r55t1 2y agoCan dragon launch to a polar orbit and safely deorbit from a polar orbit?
- perihelions 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fram2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fram2
- CableNinja 2y agoThere was also Polaris Dawn about 6 months ago. They did a highly polar orbit
- perihelions 2y agoI don't want to quibble just to be contrarian. Polaris Dawn was at the International Space Station's inclination, 52°, which is the most common destination for human astronauts. Isn't usually considered a polar orbit. I want rather to clarify a really neat point, about what the other mission's doing. From KSC, you can conventionally only launch to inclinations below 62° [0] (constrained by populated landmasses). To get to a true polar orbit from Florida, that means they have to attempt a curved launch [1]—something that's pretty rare, and (to my knowledge) Falcon itself never tried before. (The parent comment was right to ask whether a polar orbit is possible: it does create interesting challenges). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Space_Center_Launch_Complex_39 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Space_Center_Launch_Co... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogleg_maneuver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogleg_maneuver
- mturmon 2y agoRemember, it is passively cooled (a major design plus and, I assume, part of why it was able to achieve the cost it did). So there would be no need for a manned mission. And in fact, at that cost, it wouldn’t make sense anyway.
- pklausler 2y agoPossibly stupid question: how does this polar orbit stay over the terminator? And how is the terminator defined for a polar orbit here, since both the north and south poles are on the terminator only at the equinoxes?
- sbierwagen 2y ago>how does this polar orbit stay over the terminator? Because it's launched at a angle greater than a straight north-south 90 degree orbit, so orbital precession will correctly follow the terminator. Depending on the orbital altitude this can be more than 140 degrees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit