Thursday March 24, the NASA Stardust spacecraft last turn its main engines. At first glance, the lighting is an insignificant event. After all, the venerable spacecraft has executed 40 trajectory correction maneuvers since its launch in 1999, and between the main engines and the reaction control system and its engines have jointly on more than 2 million times. But today the 24 March will be different from everyone else. This launch will definitely drain the life of NASA's comet chaser most traveled. "We call it 'power to exhaustion', and this is what you do, fire the rockets until they is nothing in the tank, "says the director of Stardust-NExT project, Tim Larson of JPL." It's a unique way of dying for an interplanetary spacecraft. Essentially, Stardust will provide us useful information right up until the end. " The on until the complete exhaustion answer the question of how much fuel remains in the tank Stardust. " We will take this data and compare them with what our estimates indicate that it is, "said Allan Cheuvront, director of Stardust-NExT program by Lockheed Martin Space Systems." This will give us a good idea of \u200b\u200bhow valid are our models of fuel consumption and allow us to make predictions adjusted in future missions. "
March 24, at approximately 4 pm PDT, four rocket engines for NASA's Stardust spacecraft, shown in this artist's concept, is expected to fire until the ship's fuel runs out.
- SOURCE http://observatori.uv.es/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1881% 3Asatrdust-of-nasa-good- to-the-last-drop & catid = 52% 3Anoticosmos & Itemid = 74 & lang = en
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