European Venus Express Spacecraft May Be Out of Fuel

Uh oh! There is one place you don't want to run out of fuel most certainly, and that's in space.

From the article:

On Nov. 28, mission controllers lost contact with the European Space Agency's (ESA) Venus Express spacecraft, which has been circling Earth's hellishly hot "sister planet" for more than eight years. Over the past few days, the team was able to re-establish limited contact and also downlink some data, confirming that Venus Express' solar arrays are pointed at the sun as desired, mission officials said.

The reasons for the communications blackout remain unclear at the moment, but one possibility is that the probe has finally run out of fuel.

Read Full Article Here at Space.com

Even though the solar arrays would keep the craft's communications system powered up, the fuel is needed to maintain proper orientation for the crafts high gain antenna and keep it pointed at Earth. If the craft can no longer be pointed at Earth, we loose comms with it.

The craft was doing maneuvers back on November 23rd, and they think it may have caused it to run out of fuel.

a reply to: eriktheawful

I do that all the time in KSP....,..


Except this isnt KSP and id expect better from ESA.

Guess crap happens.

a reply to: crazyewok

Well to be fair to the ESA, if you read the article, the craft may have run into the planet's exosphere further out than was thought, creating drag.

And as you know from playing KSP, that will mess around with your orbit and make you use more fuel than you normally would.

Still, yah, with KSP we can always click on that "revert" button. Too bad real life doesn't have one of those, yah?

Its truly sad when agencies spend years and multimillion dollars on a venture like this so see it go up in flames or run out of gas.

Seems like it reached its life expectancy, at least. My question is what sort of fuel do they use that lasts eight years?

a reply to: Jchristopher5

Don't quote me but its probably compresses O2 and H.

They only carry a small amount of fuel to adjust orbit and maintain elevation.

Venus Express has far exceeded its life expectancy. With an original life-span of 2 years, it has been going for 8 years. So, not bad going at all.

It had been given an extension, but it was expected to die the end of this year.

The mission will conclude during 2014 when the spacecraft runs out of fuel and enters into the Venusian atmosphere

"When we launched Venus Express, nobody thought it would last this long. This spacecraft has been operating in a very demanding environment for many years; with this mission we could capitalise and consolidate our early experiences with Rosetta and Mars Express. This all contributed to the now very well established capability at ESA to conceive and operate interplanetary missions.”

blogs.esa.int...

Once I had dream that I was on a manned mission on Venus. I dont remember much but I remember the atmosphere and my field of view being very hazy. And of course we were wearing special gear and such.

But the thing that most intrigued me was that we came across artifacts that were obviously from an advanced civilization that was there no more. They were very blatant. It felt ghostly. It was a very odd feeling.

Since that dream I have always wondered if that dream was like a premonition type dream, that maybe one day we will find that there was in fact an intelligent civilization that once existed on Venus.

That dream gave me a sort of deep seeded connection with Venus. Every time I read something about Venus I am reminded of that dream, that short wondrous moment.



-Alien

duplicate post

originally posted by: Alien Abduct
Once I had dream that I was on a manned mission on Venus. I dont remember much but I remember the atmosphere and my field of view being very hazy. And of course we were wearing special gear and such.

But the thing that most intrigued me was that we came across artifacts that were obviously from an advanced civilization that was there no more. They were very blatant. It felt ghostly. It was a very odd feeling.

After three decades of study by the finest scholars and archaeologists, humans eventually decoded the massive Venusian codex.

The title: "Global warming is an evil liberal hoax" --- by Broadcast Tribune Russh Lll'ymbahw third spawn of Mordoc.

Its truly sad when agencies spend years and multimillion dollars on a venture like this so see it go up in flames or run out of gas.

Fuel doesn't last forever. As someone else has already pointed out, the mission design lifetime was 2 years, so to last a total of 8 years is excellent. The mission controllers will have received massive amounts of useful data during that time, so to suggest that the Venus Express spacecraft has somehow been a waste of millions of dollars is rather silly.

originally posted by: Alien Abduct
Once I had dream that I was on a manned mission on Venus. I dont remember much but I remember the atmosphere and my field of view being very hazy. And of course we were wearing special gear and such.

But the thing that most intrigued me was that we came across artifacts that were obviously from an advanced civilization that was there no more. They were very blatant. It felt ghostly. It was a very odd feeling.

Since that dream I have always wondered if that dream was like a premonition type dream, that maybe one day we will find that there was in fact an intelligent civilization that once existed on Venus.



-Alien

There would not have been enough time for one to evolve on Venus but maybe someone else might have explored it during the time when it was temperate before its runaway greenhouse effect.

Your dream sounds a lot like Frederick Pohl's "Gateway" books which involve an alien species from another star system who explored and made bases in our Solar System long before humanity existed.