Planks Satellite Fails

On Saturday, 1.5-million kilometres from Earth, at a place known as the L2 Lagrangian Point, where the Planck Satellite orbits the sun in lockstep with the Earth, a tank of liquid helium coolant went dry.

Immediately, a camera that had been chilled by the helium to -270 degrees Celsius started to warm up from the sun’s light, and as it did, an array of highly sensitive microwave radiation detectors known as spider-web bolometers became too warm to detect the faint, lingering flash of the Big Bang, an ancient light that fills the sky.

Thus ended the working life of the Planck Surveyor, a European satellite that took the most expensive single picture in history, and which soon will use a bit of remaining fuel to propel itself toward cremation in the sun.

Source


I do not know about all of you but to me this is a bit of a shock.

Any thoughts?

Yes that sucks, but I think it is odd that the craft can be salvaged. Who the heck makes these things with an expandable budget? Can't we retrieve a multi-million dollar craft?

This satellite was tasked to establish the Universe as Infinite, we now have to wait until the next mission.

reply to post by Kashai


it has collected more than double the ammount of data it was required to , so i dont see a problem

Originally posted by samlf3rd
Yes that sucks, but I think it is odd that the craft can be salvaged. Who the heck makes these things with an expandable budget? Can't we retrieve a multi-million dollar craft?

No, we can't. Although Canada recently developed a piece of equipment that will hopefully be able to refuel satellites. The satellite completed it's mission though, and did much more than was ever expected, so what more do you want?

Originally posted by Kashai

On Saturday, 1.5-million kilometres from Earth, at a place known as the L2 Lagrangian Point, where the Planck Satellite orbits the sun in lockstep with the Earth, a tank of liquid helium coolant went dry.

Immediately, a camera that had been chilled by the helium to -270 degrees Celsius started to warm up from the sun’s light, and as it did, an array of highly sensitive microwave radiation detectors known as spider-web bolometers became too warm to detect the faint, lingering flash of the Big Bang, an ancient light that fills the sky.

Thus ended the working life of the Planck Surveyor, a European satellite that took the most expensive single picture in history, and which soon will use a bit of remaining fuel to propel itself toward cremation in the sun.

Source


I do not know about all of you but to me this is a bit of a shock.

Any thoughts?

Where does the shock come from? This is the intended outcome from the beginning. Are you shocked when the runner finishes the race? The satellite did MORE than was expected. Please explain what has you shocked.

reply to post by Kashai


When you have to design in an expendable like liquid helium, then your project has a finite lifespan.

That helium isn't going to re-tank itself, you know. At some point, it's all gone, tout fini.

This happens to pretty much every satellite, by the way. Not generally for a coolant like this, but they generally all carry station-keeping/maneuvering fuel, which they use to maintain orientation and location/orbit. When that's all gone, same thing.

Nothing ever lasts forever, as they say.

RIP (in the sun) Planck, a job well done. I remember when it was launched and how hopeful I was about the mission. Nice work. Here's the wikipedia page:

en.wikipedia.org...

There is nothing on the page about the failure, or can I find any other news article about it. Could it be a false report, or is that too much to hope for. The sun awaits.

Originally posted by Aleister
RIP (in the sun) Planck, a job well done. I remember when it was launched and how hopeful I was about the mission. Nice work. Here's the wikipedia page:

en.wikipedia.org...

There is nothing on the page about the failure, or can I find any other news article about it. Could it be a false report, or is that too much to hope for. The sun awaits.

edit on 22-1-2013 by Aleister because: (no reason given)

Because there was no failure. It ran out of coolant, as it was supposed to. It accomplished much more than what it was sent to do. Satellites can not be "refilled". Once their fuel, or in this case coolant, is exhaused the satellite has reached the end of it's lifespan. A Canadian team has recently created a robot that may change that though.

reply to post by Aleister


Of course, ran out and not failure, wrong choice of words. My point was that no other news is popping up on this, and I would expect quite a few news links to the story. It seems the Herschel observatory is set to run out as well - it's wikipedia page suggests it may or may not last until March.

Well, it sucks but it was expected.
Thank you, Planck, and thanks for all the fish!

reply to post by OccamsRazor04


It was tasked with determining if in fact the Universe was Infinfite, I already said that.

Originally posted by Kashai
reply to post by OccamsRazor04

 

It was tasked with determining if in fact the Universe was Infinfite, I already said that.

Show me where that was it's task. I believe it was trying to determine if the universe was "flat" or not. Show me something official stating it's task was to determine whether the universe was infinite or not. It's actual task was to gather cosmic microwave background data I think. It gathered ALL the data it was supposed to gather, and then it gathered an equal amount more. It gathered 200% of it's intended data mark.

ETA: Just to throw out an analogy, you can use a DNA to test to prove someone is NOT the father, but you can not prove they ARE the father. Same here. The data could prove a finite universe, it can not prove an infinite one. The universe could be finite, just very large, and the data would not show a finite universe. So they can prove whether the universe is less than or greater than a few hundred million light years big. The data Planck recorded can NEVER prove an infinite universe.

reply to post by OccamsRazor04



Researchers Find Evidence of Other Universes Lurking in the Cosmic Background

Simply stated such a determination in effect would confirm a process. This that our Universe is created by other universe's which in turn were created by others and so on. Specifically it is evidence that the Universe is in fact infinite.

What would you offer as a beginning or end to existence as such?

It would also make the conclusion that our Universe came from nothing irrelevant.

Any thoughts?

At the very least I hope there will be some intelligent responses...


Any thoughts?

Originally posted by Kashai
reply to post by OccamsRazor04

 

Researchers Find Evidence of Other Universes Lurking in the Cosmic Background

Simply stated such a determination in effect would confirm a process. This that our Universe is created by other universe's which in turn were created by others and so on. Specifically it is evidence that the Universe is in fact infinite.

What would you offer as a beginning or end to existence as such?

It would also make the conclusion that our Universe came from nothing irrelevant.

Any thoughts?

edit on 25-1-2013 by Kashai because: modifed content

From your link.

Our universe is contained in a kind of cosmic bubble

Contained means finite. You can not contain infinity.

The term Universe also means “all there is”.

Occam, you know as well as I do that when when Copernicus made his model of the "Universe," its total size extended just beyond the orbit of Saturn. When I was in 7 grade and in a Catholic School I we were informed by our teacher that per the Vatican, the Universe only included the Milky Way and Andromeda.

Before that it was claimed that the Milky Way was "the Universe".

The object we live in that is anywhere between 40 to 180 billion light years wide will need to be renamed, if in fact it essentially was born 13.7 billion years ago.

Any thoughts?

Originally posted by Kashai
The term Universe also means “all there is”.

Occam, you know as well as I do that when when Copernicus made his model of the "Universe," its total size extended just beyond the orbit of Saturn. When I was in 7 grade and in a Catholic School I we were informed by our teacher that per the Vatican, the Universe only included the Milky Way and Andromeda.

Before that it was claimed that the Milky Way was "the Universe".

The object we live in that is anywhere between 40 to 180 billion light years wide will need to be renamed, if in fact it essentially was born 13.7 billion years ago.

Any thoughts?

Can I offer a suggestion? Stop putting any thoughts at the end of every post. Perhaps it's just me but it's very annoying. Not a knock on you at all, only a helpful suggestion.

Now, Universe can mean 'all there is' .... that doesn't mean infinite. I was only responding to the article YOU linked, which claims the Universe was contained in a bubble. Something infinite can never be 'contained' in a bubble. If the article you posted is true, then the universe MUST be finite.

reply to post by OccamsRazor04


Actually I have been doing that for a very long time and yes there have been some who found it bothersome.

OK I will not do it anymore.

"Now, Universe can mean 'all there is' .... that doesn't mean infinite. I was only responding to the article YOU linked, which claims the Universe was contained in a bubble. Something infinite can never be 'contained' in a bubble. If the article you posted is true, then the universe MUST be finite."

The thread I linked presents that the multiverse could be possible. Given this data this is the information Planks failed to provide due to her being damaged. In this case all there is could very well be infinite and in relation to evidence. Where does the matter come from in the case of this scenario. Where did the parent universe's get there matter and so on.

Clearly this discussion is for me very interesting and I suspect you feel the same.

I still haven't seen a confirmation of this news, and the wikipedia page still lists Planck as active and ongoing. Was this a false alarm? I would think that more news outlets would have picked the story up, or at least the Space websites. Herschel may run out of its fuel though at some point soon.