I will be the most sad when Voyager 1 & 2 stop communicating. They are the most successful probes IMO.

41 years and still going. :bow:

[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMSAT-OSCAR_7"]AMSAT-OSCAR 7[/URL]
While not actually an interplanetary probe, it's a nice special case; a radio amateur satellite that already "failed" in the early 80s and then failed a bit more, and started (sort of) working again :smile: 44 years and counting, if you include the non-operational years in between.

[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Cometary_Explorer"]ICE / ISEE-3[/URL]
Another one, lost in space, then recovered, then probably lost again. There is just no way to contact it at the moment, and the exact orbital position isn't known, and it can't be adjusted anymore as the thrusters failed in 2014. But the next chance is in 2031, and it may (or may not) still be alive then. Of course it'll be more of a curiosity by then, not really useful for any actual observations.

[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMAGE"]IMAGE[/URL]
A more recent orbiter, operational from 2000 until its sudden loss in 2005. Then it was suddenly recovered by accident in 2018, but only temporarily - it's fallen silent again.

Of course, none of these cases apply to the Voyagers. When their nuclear battery runs out, they're gone forever. :sad:

[QUOTE=nomead;508592]Of course, none of these cases apply to the Voyagers. When their nuclear battery runs out, they're gone forever. :sad:[/QUOTE]

Until Kirk finds one a couple hundred years from now.

I just thought that it was interesting where this thread started and the current announcements about SLS going slow.
[url]https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2019/03/17/surprise-nasa-announcement-puts-future-of-new-mega-rocket-in-doubt/[/url]
And since today is the scheduled second launch of a FH.
And more launches for the FH are scheduled for this year.
And it is within the 7 year requirement laid down in the first post.

I thought it would be a fine time to post.


Space.IL, Bennu, and Ryugu all saw action on the same day last week, too. That is awesome.

[url=https://www.cnet.com/news/nasa-was-sold-faulty-aluminum-in-19-year-scam/]NASA was sold faulty aluminum in 19-year scam[/url] | CNET
[quote]NASA on Tuesday revealed that a pair of failed missions were caused by a 19-year aluminum scam.

The space agency previously said the 2009 Orbiting Carbon Observatory and 2011 Glory missions malfunctioned when the Taurus XL rockets’ protective nose cones failed to separate on command.

However, a joint investigation involving NASA and the Justice Department revealed that the problem was caused by aluminum extrusion maker Sapa Profiles, which falsified critical tests over 19 years.

Employees at the company’s Portland, Oregon, facilities tweaked failing tests so materials appeared to pass from 1996 to 2015, according to the Justice Department. …

Sapa, which has since changed its name to Hydro Extrusion Portland, agreed to pay $46 million to the US government and other commercial customers — which doesn’t even come close to the $700 million NASA lost as a result of Taurus XL failures.[/quote]
Sounds like more Boeing-style neoliberal "allow them to self-certify"-ness. NASA has a history of this sort of thing. True, you can't independently test every component, but how about the absolutely most mission-critical ones? The infamous Hubble flawed main mirror was similar - NASA took Perkin-Elmer's word for it that the mirror was up to spec, when a scaled-up Foucault test like that done by innumerable amateur telescope makers would have revealed the problem, and there would have been no mission delay because NASA had a ready-to-go second main mirror, a backup subcontracted by P-E to Eastman Kodak which was brought out of storage and tested after the fact and found to be fully up to spec.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;515686][url=https://www.cnet.com/news/nasa-was-sold-faulty-aluminum-in-19-year-scam/]NASA was sold faulty aluminum in 19-year scam[/url] | CNET[/QUOTE]Was the out-of-spec metal actually the cause of the failures? Or were NASA just looking for someone to blame, found something not-to-spec, and blamed them?

[QUOTE=retina;515695]Was the out-of-spec metal actually the cause of the failures? Or were NASA just looking for someone to blame, found something not-to-spec, and blamed them?[/QUOTE]

Falsified test reports seem pretty damning - would the company have paid the hefty fine and agreed to be excluded from further contracting with the federal government if they had a strong "not our fault" argument? Not saying it's not possible or that NASA is blameless, mind you - hence my note about the agency's dismal track record of allowing contractors to self-certify.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;515964]Falsified test reports seem pretty damning - would the company have paid the hefty fine and agreed to be excluded from further contracting with the federal government if they had a strong "not our fault" argument?[/QUOTE]That depends upon the contract. If it says "anything out-of-spec then you get punished" then so be it, they f.uped. But that still doesn't mean the out-of-spec stuff actually caused any problem. The spec might have been set deliberately high (quite probably I would imagine) and then stuff marginally sub-par would still cope perfectly fine. So, no, I think the punishment does not conclusively tell us that it was the cause, just that someone did bad and they got caught.

They should be accountable for the full $700mil IMO.

Metal toothpaste
 

Extruding metal is a strange yet commodity business. I had occasion in the 1990s to deal with PEI, the winner of competitive bids, for certain custom profile aluminum extrusions for frame material for the prototyping of muon chambers for the compact muon solenoid then being built for installation at CERN. Specs included tolerances on profile cross sectional shape, twist, and bow. As I recall they ran at least two batches of each profile to get some that passed my inspection. I think PEI later went bankrupt. PEI = Precision Extrusions Incorporated.
On an earlier 1983 project, for main structural components of the WUPPE telescope space shuttle payload, we avoided the whole NASA material certification rigamarole by acquiring precertified flat plate from Marshal Space Flight Center existing stock, and turned it into thick wall 24" od 2" wall tubing, as raw material for machining thin 0.2" wall ribbed shells with mating flanges, by annealing, rolling, 4-stage welding with radiography after each quarter, rough cleanup machining, stretch-forming, aging, and final machining, along with weld coupons for metallurgical samples and tensile testing. We made 3 such tubes for a project that required two finished parts, to have a spare in case of unrecoverable error. That was a crash program to replace some parts of a different design by others, that had failed to meet spec due to excessive weld distortion. Critical $30,000 parts in a $30,000,000 project; the main telescope tube mounting and spacing the main optics. The accelerated program for replacement succeeded in a few months, necessary to keep the schedule for payload assembly completion and integration onto a 4-experiment platform, in preparation for the flight after Challenger in 1986. Challenger's February 1986 loss during launch was a disaster that grounded the shuttle fleet for two years, and upon resumption, catchup on classified payloads continued the grounding of scientific payloads for an additional two years. So the WUPPE experiment that was intended to fly in March of 1986, whose launch schedule we worked frantically and creatively to save in 1983, first flew in 1990. At that time, there was no such thing as self-certification. We had to keep every record, and used one 3rd party subcontractor to inspect the work of another. WUPPE flew twice, and is now on display in a local museum, and the nspection and purchase records are still around.

[url]https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2019/06/nasa-payloads-next-falcon-heavy-lz-1/[/url]

A long a informative article about the upcoming payloads and launch of the Falcon Heavy [quote]NASA has released information regarding the U.S. space agency’s payloads that will launch on the Air Force’s STP-2 (Space Test Program -2) mission on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket later this month.

[...]

The NASA payloads are: the Deep Space Atomic Clock, the Green Propellant Infusion Mission, the Space Environment Testbeds, and the Enhanced Tandem Beacon Experiment.[/quote]