herschel [telescope] dies

ok i,m going to take a guess this has already been posted but i couldn,t find anything on it.

just surprised in this day and age when you spend a billion euros on it you would think it would last longer than 4 years........really the state europes in the now then then this 1 adventure probably is the 1 and only time it will happen cause no1s every going to see it justified spending that money again for such a short time when people all over europe are struggling to survive.

reply to post by sparky31


Care to explain what you are rambling on about?
A link or a clue as to what a herschel is?

reply to post by sparky31


A title and then a rant, not even a link..not exactly the most descriptive or informative post ive read today

I thought he was talking about Herschel Walker.

reply to post by g146541


www.bbc.co.uk...

The biggest telescope in space has run out of helium apparently.

reply to post by sparky31


It would help if you would include a link so other members will know what you're talking about.

Here's one:

www.esa.int...

reply to post by poloblack

I thought he was talking about Herschel Walker.

I thought so too, but he's still alive and kicking.

I think they're all going to die in the end, it's ok. Rick is losing his mind and Daryl just lost his brother.

But yes, Herschel will be the first to go.

Wait, that's not what this is?

reply to post by lewman


And this is why the Lewman rocks!
More toward the OP, "they" has to know this was gonna happen eventually.
Is there no way they could send a virgin© mobile spaceship to simply "top off" the tank?
If no, I say very very bad engineering.

reply to post by g146541

He means The Herschel Space Observatory,

the infrared space telescope launched in may, 2009.

It came to the end of its life...

The telescope's lifespan is governed by a tank of coolant on board.

When the coolant runs out, the telescope doesn't work.

Estimations of the amount of coolant left predicted an end of observations by the end of March 2013.

It continued to operate until 29 April 2013, when it was announced that Herschel had run out of coolant.

The observatory needed the coolant to stay sufficiently cold to observe far infrared light it was designed to see

Wiki

As long as the military industrial complex exists "herschel" will never die, I'm almost sure they still have some huge "telescope" up there. The day we see ET's down here and publicly known is the day I will say ok, "herschel" is finally dead.

OMG...does this mean that The Walking Dead is going to be canceled?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Scared me for a minute there.

reply to post by sparky31

Thank you OP, this is sad news. Herschel did a great job and was one of the best space telescope missions. I remember watching its launch, and the interest in the scientific community to what it was going to look at and discover.

i apologize for not explaining it fully.....just cause i,m interested in everything on here to do with space etc i stupidly assumed everyone knew what i was talking about.......should have posted a link but i see someones already made up for my mistake........damn u alcohol

Originally posted by sparky31
ok i,m going to take a guess this has already been posted but i couldn,t find anything on it.

just surprised in this day and age when you spend a billion euros on it you would think it would last longer than 4 years........really the state europes in the now then then this 1 adventure probably is the 1 and only time it will happen cause no1s every going to see it justified spending that money again for such a short time when people all over europe are struggling to survive.

edit on Mon Apr 29 2013 by DontTreadOnMe because: added telescope to title

A typical quote from someone on here that can't be bothered to find out how something works then makes a silly thread OP regarding it.

It was bound to happen they knew it would run out of hellium.

The event was not unexpected: the mission began with over 2300 litres of liquid helium, which has been slowly evaporating since the final top-up the day before Herschel’s launch on 14 May 2009.
The liquid helium was essential to cool the observatory’s instruments to close to absolute zero, allowing Herschel to make highly sensitive observations of the cold Universe until today.

Not sure why people are upset over this. This is how those telescopes work.

In order to make them as sensitive as possible, they are cooled using super coolant like liquid gasses.

However, there is no system that we have that can keep that coolant from running out. Every single infrared telescope that anyone has sent up that uses this system, has this coolant run out:

IRAS

ISO

Spitzer

Akari

WISE

And yes, Herschel was designed this way too.

Spitzer has other instruments that it can use, but not at the same sensitivity that had before it's coolant ran out.

They should put in orbit around the moon so someday it can be servic3d or salvaged for parts or recycled.

R.I.P. Herschel, you gave us some great images

I suppose there is no way to "refill" the telescope with the coolant. When we finally get to build on the Moon, it would be cool (pun intended) to place one of those infrared telescopes in the permanent shadow in the polar craters; I'd imagine the coolant would last longer there, they are some of the coldest places in the Solar System.

So when is the funeral? Is there going to be a lunch served after the service? Do you need to be an astronomer to attend the luncheon? is there coffee and cookies, I better invite Beezzer if I go

If we didn't have the shuttle at the time, the Hubble would have been an expensive piece of junk also.