[FPSPACE] The Planetary Society speaks out on saving the Voyagerprobes

[Chris Faranetta]

I'm amazed that shutting down the spacecraft has even been discussed.
Would it be technically possible to transition spacecraft operations
into private hands? Goldstone's equal the R-70 in Evpatoria, Ukraine
http://rniikp.ru/en/abilities/outspace/ is not very busy, maybe Voyager
could be operated from there. 

CF 

 
-----Original Message-----
From: fpspace-bounces at friends-partners.org
[mailto:fpspace-bounces at friends-partners.org] On Behalf Of LARRY KLAES
Sent: Friday, May 27, 2005 9:17 AM
To: fpspace at friends-partners.org
Subject: [FPSPACE] The Planetary Society speaks out on saving the
Voyagerprobes

Some scientists -- including Voyagers' own -- were incredulous on
hearing 
the news. "At first, I thought it must be a misunderstanding, because it

couldn't possibly be true," Stamatios M. (Tom) Krimigis, principal 
investigator on the low energy charged particle instrument on board both

spacecraft told The Planetary Society in an interview last week. "We're 
leaving the neighborhood, and Voyager is the first and only human-made 
object to cross this boundary. It's like Columbus seeing the shores of 
America and saying, 'Well, time to turn around and go home.' The
absurdity 
of this is that for the past three years Voyager has been exploring a
new 
frontier, and if there is an exploration initiative as NASA and the 
President have proclaimed, then Voyager is one of the finest examples,
if 
not the finest example of exploring the frontier. It's so mind-boggling,
I 
said to myself, 'rational people would not arrive at this kind of a 
decision.' Then I found out otherwise."

...

Voyager is not the only extended mission that was erased from the space 
agency's proposed FY06 Budget. The first and only planned mission to
orbit 
over and explore the polar regions of the Sun, Ulysses, a joint project
with 
the European Space Agency (ESA), has also been targeted for
cancellation, as 
have Wind and Geotail, which are studying the near space environment of 
Earth, and FAST, Polar, and TRACE, which are continuing to contribute to
the 
coordinated study of geospace.

It's all about money, like most things these days, and the sequence of 
events that led to the sudden, proposed mission erasures began with
NASA's 
new Vision for Space Exploration set forth by President George W. Bush
in 
January 2004, according to Ghassem Asrar, deputy associate administrator
of 
the science mission directorate, which oversees the Earth-Sun System 
division through which Voyager is funded these days.


http://planetary.org/news/2005/voyager-update_t-shock-termination_0524.h
tml


_______________________________________________
FPSPACE mailing list
FPSPACE at friends-partners.org
http://www.friends-partners.org/mailman/listinfo/fpspace