Launched roughly four years ago, the Herschel space telescope has run out of liquid coolant and has stopped making observations.
The Herschel observatory, a European space telescope for which NASA helped build instruments and process data, has stopped making observations after running out of liquid coolant as expected.
The European Space Agency mission, launched almost four years ago, revealed the universe’s “coolest” secrets by observing the frigid side of planet, star and galaxy formation.
“Herschel gave us the opportunity to peer into the dark and cold regions of the universe that are invisible to other telescopes,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington. “This successful mission demonstrates how NASA and ESA can work together to tackle unsolved mysteries in astronomy.”
Confirmation the helium is exhausted came today, at the beginning of the spacecraft’s daily communication session with its ground station in Western Australia. A clear rise in temperatures was measured in all of Herschel’s instruments.
Herschel launched aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana in May 2009. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, built components for two of Herschel’s three science instruments. NASA also supports the U.S. astronomical community through the agency’s Herschel Science Center, located at the California Institute of Technology’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center in Pasadena.
Herschel’s detectors were designed to pick up the glow from celestial objects with infrared wavelengths as long as 625 micrometers, which is 1,000 times longer than what we can see with our eyes. Because heat interferes with these devices, they were chilled to temperatures as low as 2 kelvins (minus 271 degrees Celsius, or 456 Fahrenheit) using liquid helium. The detectors also were kept cold by the spacecraft’s orbit, which is around a stable point called the second Lagrange point about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. This location gave Herschel a better view of the universe.
“Herschel has improved our understanding of how new stars and planets form, but has also raised many new questions,” said Paul Goldsmith, NASA Herschel project scientist at JPL. “Astronomers will be following up on Herschel’s discoveries with ground-based and future space-based observatories for years to come.”
The mission will not be making any more observations, but discoveries will continue. Astronomers still are looking over the data, much of which already is public and available through NASA’s Herschel Science Center. The final batch of data will be public in about six months.
“Our goal is to help the U.S. community exploit the nuggets of gold that lie in that data archive,” said Phil Appleton, project scientist at the science center.
Highlights of the mission include:
- Discovering long, filamentary structures in space, dotted with dense star-making knots of material.
- Detecting definitively, for the first time, oxygen molecules in space, in addition to other never-before-seen molecules. By mapping the molecules in different regions, researchers are learning more about the life cycles of stars and planets and the origins of life.
- Discovering high-speed outflows around central black holes in active galaxies, which may be clearing out surrounding regions and suppressing future star formation.
- Opening new views on extremely distant galaxies that could be seen only with Herschel, and providing new information about their high rates of star formation.
- Following the trail of water molecules from distant galaxies to the clouds of gas between stars to planet-forming solar systems.
- Examining a comet in our own solar system and finding evidence comets could have brought a substantial fraction of water to Earth.
- Together with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, discovering a large asteroid belt around the bright star Vega.
Other findings from the mission include the discovery of some of the youngest stars ever seen in the nearby Orion “cradle,” and a peculiar planet-forming disk of material surrounding the star TW Hydra, indicating planet formation may happen over longer periods of time than expected. Herschel also has shown stars interact with their environment in many surprising ways, including leaving trails as they move through clouds of gas and dust.
So was the $100 million + plus worth 4 years of pictures? I do not see much “bang” for the buck here except to a specific few people who might be interested..That $100 million could have gone a long way in helping at lot more people here on earth than it did…I’d rather have seen that $100 million go into building a real Space Station or Space Port instead of the assortment of tin cans that is up there now.
I realize that $100 million in space research seems like a high figure, but consider it is no higher than what we spend on football players, race cars and for movies about (guess what?) space. Who we are, how we got here and where we are going is a great discussion for all of humanity. It touches science, religion, politics, entertainment and yes, even sports.
Where do you think the money was spent? You figure they stuffed that launch rocket with thousand pound notes? You don’t suppose the thousands of workers in the background of that project were working for free do you? Or the money the companies made that paid taxes to the government?