Deep space spacecraft update:

Cassini – has been orbiting Saturn for 10 years, 6 months and 6 days, expected end of life 2017.

Juno – launched Aug 5 2011, arrive at Jupiter Jul 2016.

New Horizons – launch Jan 19 2006, flyby of Pluto 14 Jul 2015.

Rosetta – in orbit around comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko since 6 Aug 2014, the lander Philae may or may not wake up as the comet approaches the Sun. End of mission Dec 2015.

Dawn – to arrive Ceres 6 Mar 2015, expect a picture of Ceres on 26 Jan 2015 as it gets closer.

Opportunity – Launched 7 Jul 2003 and still alive. In Dec 2014, NASA reported that Opportunity was suffering from “amnesia” events in which the rover fails to write data in one of the rover’s seven memory banks. NASA aims to force the rover’s software to ignore the failed memory bank.

Curiosity – Still very active in Gale Crater. Mission officially “extended indefinitely”.

Mars Express – On 19 Oct 2014, the ESA reported the Mars Express is healthy after the Comet Siding Spring flyby of Mars. Launched in Jun 2003, it’s had five mission extensions so far.

Voyager 1 & 2 – Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 still alive and expected to last until 2025.

Messenger – Due to die soon, but on 24 Dec 2014 NASA revealed a plan to extend the Messenger mission at Mercury an extra month by using its propulsion system pressurant for reaction control.

Akatsuki – Akatsuki was launched on 20 May 2010, by JAXA, and was planned to enter Venus orbit in Dec 2010. However, the orbital insertion maneuver failed and the spacecraft was left in heliocentric orbit. Another attempt will be made when it again approaches the planet in 2016.

Venus Express – Launched Nov 2005, Venus Espress was shut down in Dec 2014 :( So Venus is currently un-observed.

Look forward to BepiColombo. This is a joint mission of ESA and JAXA to the planet Mercury. The mission comprises two satellites to be launched together: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO). The mission will perform a comprehensive study on Mercury, including its magnetic field, magnetosphere, interior structure and surface. It is scheduled to launch on 9 Jul 2016.

Mars Orbiter Mission is India’s first interplanetary mission. Launched on 5 Nov 2013, it has been orbiting Mars since 24 Sep 2014.

Mars Odyssey is the oldest spacecraft orbiting Mars that is still operational. Launched 7 Apr 2001.

Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter, launched 12 Aug 2005. Still operational.

MAVEN, launched 18 Nov 2013, (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN Mission) arrived in a highly elliptical orbit around Mars on 22 Sep 2014. Operational.

Cassini has been amazing…. what a success story

Dropbear said:

Cassini has been amazing…. what a success story

Indeed. Not the only success story, though. Above I’ve listed 14 currently-operational deep-space spacecraft. Thinking further, I can name 7 more currently-operational deep-space spacecraft.

Challenge. I bet that nobody on the forum can name all 7, without naming any non-operational ones.

Hint “deep space” includes any spacecraft that is not in orbit around the Earth, Moon, or any Earth-Moon Lagrangian point.

• Hint “deep space” includes any spacecraft that is not in orbit around the Earth, Moon, or any Earth-Moon Lagrangian point.

There is a couple watching the sun, isn’t there?

furious said:

• Hint “deep space” includes any spacecraft that is not in orbit around the Earth, Moon, or any Earth-Moon Lagrangian point.

There is a couple watching the sun, isn’t there?

:) Yes. Though that doesn’t account for all 7.

In Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan has a whole chapter called ‘The Gift of Voyager’. That chapter could take up a whole book of its own if written now.

Great update, thanks, mol.

I’ll just put this here:
http://gizmodo.com/nasa-made-these-gorgeous-travel-posters-for-actual-exop-1677886750

mollwollfumble said:

Dropbear said:

Cassini has been amazing…. what a success story

Indeed. Not the only success story, though. Above I’ve listed 14 currently-operational deep-space spacecraft. Thinking further, I can name 7 more currently-operational deep-space spacecraft.

Challenge. I bet that nobody on the forum can name all 7, without naming any non-operational ones.

Hint “deep space” includes any spacecraft that is not in orbit around the Earth, Moon, or any Earth-Moon Lagrangian point.

OK, had enough time? The other 7 currently-operational deep space spacecraft are:

Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) a NASA Explorer program Solar and space exploration mission to study matter comprising energetic particles from the sun. Launched 1997. Has fuel to orbit near the L1 until 2024.

Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Orbiting near the L1 since 1996. Sill operational. Originally planned for a two year mission, the mission has been extended many times, most recently to Dec 2016. Brilliantly successful, the SOHO website is always worth a visit.

STEREO A. Launched 26 Oct 2006. Nominal initial mission was for 3 months but now greatly extended. In 2015, contact will be temporarily lost for several months when the STEREO spacecraft pass behind the Sun. STEREO A has a sister spacecrafty STEREO B. Unfortunately, contact with STEREO B was lost after a planned shutdown on 1 Oct 2014, attempts are still being made to recover it.

GAIA – Launched Jan 2014, mission until 2018. This spacecraft is in Sun-Earth Lagrangian point L2, which puts it way further away than the Moon. Gaia will create a precise three-dimensional map of astronomical objects throughout the Milky Way and map their motions, which encode the origin and subsequent evolution of the Milky Way.

Chang’e 2 – A Chinese deep-space probe. Launched 1 Oct 2010. Passed asteroid (4179) Toutatis on 13 Dec 2012. Still operating in deep space and being used to test Chinese deep space telemetry. Has enough fuel to last until about 2018.

WIND – A NASA spacecraft deployed to study radio and plasma that occur in the solar wind and in the Earth’s magnetosphere before the solar wind reaches the Earth. It sits at Sun-Earth Lagrangian point L1. It was launched 1 Nov 1994 and took eight years to get to L1. It’s said to have fuel for 60 years.

International Sun Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3). Launched in 1978, it was the first spacecraft to be put into orbit around Sun-Earth L1, where it operated for four years. After the original mission ended, it was commanded to leave L1 in September 1982 in order to investigate comets and the Sun. Now in a heliocentric orbit, an unsuccessful attempt to return to halo orbit was made in 2014 when it made a flyby of the Earth–Moon system.

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Other deep space spacecraft no longer in operation include

Ulysses. Launched 1990. Shut down 30 Jun 2009. This was in an elliptical polar orbit around that Sun that reached out as far as Jupiter.

Planck – 3 Jul 2009 to 21 Oct 2013. The most detailed ever study of the Cosmic Microwave background. Superseding both COBE and WMAP.

WMAP – 1 Oct 2001 to Oct 2010. Famous for its maps of the cosmic microwave background.

Herschel – Jul 2009 to 29 Apr 2013. The largest infrared telescope ever launched, operating at longer wavelengths than Spitzer.

Giotto – One of many asteroid and comet fly-by missions. Giotto passed Haley’s comet before shutting down in 1992. There may be other asteroid or comet flyby missions that are still operational.

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Other deep-space spacecraft now under construction include:

James Webb – expected launch Oct 2018. This is the much anticipated successor to Hubble.

Solar Orbiter (SOLO), set to launch in Jul 2017. To pass closer to the Sun than Mercury’s orbit.

Solar Probe Plus, set to launch in 2018. To approach extremely close to the Sun.

————
By the way, two famous sun-observing spacecraft are not in deep space.

Trace – Launch 2 Apr 1998, end 21 Jun 2010 was only in low Earth orbit. It you haven’t seen the fantastically detailed images of the Sun from TRACE then you must have a look.

Solar Dynamics Observatory – in geosynchronous orbit. Currently in operation, this spacecraft is like SOHO (and STEREO) but takes images much more frequently.

I thought I’d finished, but there’s another deep space spacecraft that was enormously successful and only shut down fairly recently.

Stardust visited two comets and an asteroid, 5535 Annefrank, Tempel 1, Wild 2, and ceased operations in March 2011.

> International Sun Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3). Launched in 1978

I’m still trying to get over the shock that this deep-space spacecraft was launched only 11 months after the Voyager 1 and 2, and is still in operation. For a while it was renamed “International Cometary Explorer (ICE)”. A bit more about this aging spacecraft from Wikipedia: “On May 29, 2014, two-way communication with the spacecraft was reestablished by the ISEE-3 Reboot Project, an unofficial group with support from the Skycorp company. On July 2, 2014, they fired the thrusters for the first time since 1987. However, later firings of the thrusters failed, apparently due to a lack of nitrogen pressurant in the fuel tanks. The project team will pursue an alternative plan to use the spacecraft to collect scientific data and send it back to Earth.”

Cooked a bloody nice fettuccini dish tonight… Even if I say so myself