After more than three years and two orbits of the sun, the mission of the DS1 spacecraft ended when NASA cut contact on Tuesday 18/12. Shortly after three in the afternoon on Tuesday (East Coast Time), the engineers sent the last signals to the spacecraft and asked it to turn off the the engine.
Deep Space 1 was launched in October 1988. It demonstrated successes but also failed in some of its missions. It was bombarded by a solar storm, shaken by long periods of silence and disconnection, but in the end it registers as one of NASA's surprising successes in years.
The spacecraft was initially designed to test about a dozen futuristic technologies, including a high-tech engine and an automatic navigation system. But it also brought surprising scientific data from its flyby of Comet Burley on September 22, 2001. Scientists say these are the best images ever obtained of a comet's nucleus.
Marc Rayman, Marc Rayman,. One deep space mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says that NASA scientists and engineers "squeezed a lot more out of the spacecraft, which has been extended twice. I'm glad we can finish the mission on our terms, when we're ready."
"I am sure that the scientific and technological achievements will be manifested in the following spacecraft. Many tasks that might have been beyond the economic reach or technologically impossible will now be within our reach thanks to the experiments in the DS1 spacecraft."
One of the spacecraft's immediate benefits will be the possibility of launching a spacecraft carrying a camera to the comet on July 4, 2005. The images launched by DS1 will play an important role in refining the predictions that will enable the launch of the DEEP IMPACT spacecraft, says Michael A'Hearn of the University of Maryland, who directs the Deep Impact program.
Additional space missions that require inexpensive propulsion for long-distance flight could benefit from DS1's successful experience. The spacecraft met its budget, 152 million dollars. The ion engine, powered by xenon gas, requires much less fuel than a conventional rocket engine. Although it is slower, it makes it possible to build lighter and therefore cheaper spaceships.
Rayman did not expect the DS1 spacecraft to survive the pass by Comet Borelli. He feared dust damage to the camera, and physical damage to the spacecraft from the dust surrounding the comet's nucleus. But during the approach flight to the comet, the researchers saw something interesting: most of the dust around the comet was concentrated in one jet that was shot into space, and it leaves the rest of the area almost free of dust.
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Since the encounter with the comet, engineers have tried to further stretch the ion engine's ability to propel the 486 kg spacecraft.
After the engineers cut the connection between the tracking station and the spacecraft, the spacecraft will become deaf, mute and out of control. It will rotate around itself slowly until its solar panels are no longer pointed at the sun, and the battery is depleted. Over a long period of time, perhaps millions of years, it will circle slowly around the sun.
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