DART nearly a bullseye

Ray S wrote:
There were actually two tests. The first occurred on 4 March 1997 and was
unsuccessful as the Progress M-33 spacecraft (fortunately) flew past Mir, a
near miss. Moscow decided to repeat the test on 25 June 1997 with Progress
M-34. That's when the **** hit the fan and the collision occurred. On both
tests the TV system was less than adequate for the R^D task

Wasn't the second attempt done with the Radar off because they suspect
that radar screwed up the first attempt ? And lack of radar helped
bring in a situation where crew lacked situation awareness and reacted
too late to the information that the thing was coming in real fast and
real close.

"Ray S" wrote in
:

I guess you could say that progress (no pun intended) was made in
this test
series since the M-34 vehicle got significantly closer to the docking
port than the M-33 spacecraft.

Reminds one of another half-assed test, Chernobyl.

The semblances are almost eerie, in fact. A fatigued, undertrained crew was
handed a set of poorly-validated test procedures that systematically
disabled the hardware safeties, bypassed the procedural safeties, and
culminated with pressing the big red button labelled, "DO NOT PRESS THIS
BUTTON". The outcome should have been entirely predictable.
--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

"Ray S" wrote in message
m...
Glad to hear that NASA's DART mission was a near 100% success. Now on to a
full blown autonomous rendezvous and docking demo of two unmanned NASA
spacecraft. Hope NASA can pull this off soon.

The Soviets, of course, pioneered autonomous rendezvous (and docking)
procedures and have used them to support their Salyut and Mir space
stations. And Russian equipment (the Kurs system) was used to autonomously
dock the ISS Service Module to FGB/Unity assembly in July 2000.

The Russkies had to try several times before they worked out the bugs and
performed the world's first automated rendezvous and docking of two
unmanned spacecraft (Cosmos 186 and 188) in October 1967. Gee, that was
nearly 40 years ago.

Later
Ray Schmitt


Huh? Looks like DART got a lot closer to its target that initially thought.
See

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches...rt_update.html

Hope NASA and the Orbital Sciences folks can determine the closing speed
when the collision occurred.

Later
Ray Schmitt

Ray S wrote:
[...]
Huh? Looks like DART got a lot closer to its target that initially
thought.
See

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches...rt_update.html

Hope NASA and the Orbital Sciences folks can determine the closing
speed
when the collision occurred.

Thanks for that link. It includes the followoing quote for Pat's
benefit ;-)

"NASA originally developed the DART mission to test technologies for
the Orbital Space Plane project, which has been canceled. However,
space agency officials have said they consider autonomous rendezvous
capabilities important to missions as diverse as Mars sample return,
satellite servicing and delivering cargo to the international space
station."

/dps

On Fri, 22 Apr 2005 16:43:03 -0700, snidely wrote:


Ray S wrote:
[...]
Huh? Looks like DART got a lot closer to its target that initially
thought.
See

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches...rt_update.html

Hope NASA and the Orbital Sciences folks can determine the closing
speed
when the collision occurred.

Thanks for that link. It includes the followoing quote for Pat's
benefit ;-)

"NASA originally developed the DART mission to test technologies for the
Orbital Space Plane project, which has been canceled. However, space
agency officials have said they consider autonomous rendezvous
capabilities important to missions as diverse as Mars sample return,
satellite servicing and delivering cargo to the international space
station."



Interesting article, but the DART people make it sound a lot more
complicated than it is. They kind of dance around the subject, but from
what I gathered from the article:

DART was using noisy GPS data, causing it to quickly run out of fuel. This
occurred with DART's relative velocity vector was pointed straight at the
target. The computer called off the approach, but with no fuel, there was
nothing DART could do to avoid an impact with the target. Hummmmm, I guess
it really was a dart.

I guess the Subject of this thread should have been, "DART hits a
bullseye!!!"

--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @

On Fri, 22 Apr 2005 16:43:03 -0700, snidely wrote:


Ray S wrote:
[...]
Huh? Looks like DART got a lot closer to its target that initially
thought.
See

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches...rt_update.html

Hope NASA and the Orbital Sciences folks can determine the closing
speed
when the collision occurred.

Thanks for that link. It includes the followoing quote for Pat's
benefit ;-)

"NASA originally developed the DART mission to test technologies for the
Orbital Space Plane project, which has been canceled. However, space
agency officials have said they consider autonomous rendezvous
capabilities important to missions as diverse as Mars sample return,
satellite servicing and delivering cargo to the international space
station."



Interesting article, but the DART people make it sound a lot more
complicated than it is. They kind of dance around the subject, but from
what I gathered from the article:

DART was using noisy GPS data, causing it to quickly run out of fuel. This
occurred with DART's relative velocity vector pointed straight at the
target. The computer called off the approach, but with no fuel, there was
nothing DART could do to avoid an impact with the target. Hummmmm, I guess
it really was a dart.

I guess the Subject of this thread should have been, "DART hits a
bullseye!!!"


--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @

On Sat, 23 Apr 2005 02:40:30 +0000, Craig Fink wrote:

On Fri, 22 Apr 2005 16:43:03 -0700, snidely wrote:


Ray S wrote:
[...]
Huh? Looks like DART got a lot closer to its target that initially
thought.
See

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches...rt_update.html

Hope NASA and the Orbital Sciences folks can determine the closing
speed
when the collision occurred.

Thanks for that link. It includes the followoing quote for Pat's
benefit ;-)

"NASA originally developed the DART mission to test technologies for
the Orbital Space Plane project, which has been canceled. However,
space agency officials have said they consider autonomous rendezvous
capabilities important to missions as diverse as Mars sample return,
satellite servicing and delivering cargo to the international space
station."



Interesting article, but the DART people make it sound a lot more
complicated than it is. They kind of dance around the subject, but from
what I gathered from the article:

DART was using noisy GPS data, causing it to quickly run out of fuel.
This occurred with DART's relative velocity vector pointed straight at
the target. The computer called off the approach, but with no fuel,
there was nothing DART could do to avoid an impact with the target.
Hummmmm, I guess it really was a dart.

I guess the Subject of this thread should have been, "DART hits a
bullseye!!!"

Or, the decoy is lot lighter that the original target, plume impingement
after release would impart much larger delta-Vs on a decoy. Causing the
story line for the project to get a little longer and a little more
convoluted. They would have to be extremely unlucky to actually impact
their target from 100 yards out with no fuel.

Both linear R-Bar or linear V-Bar approaches like DART was demonstrating
require adding a small amount thrust all along the path, to correct for
relative motion caused by orbital mechanics. If DART ran out of fuel
orbital mechanics would cause them to separate.

Maybe, this is one of those Dual Use things between NASA and Mmmumuum.
Last time I looked, NASA likes dual use. Them, and other people around the
world.

In honor of "Earth Day", NASA demonstrated how to pick up orbital trash
and bring it safely back to earth, cleaning our precious and limited
resource of Low Earth Orbit by removing unwanted litter dropped by other
careless Government Agencies. But being a Dual Use Project, NASA will have
to wait a few decades to announce their great conservationalist
achievement, maybe on some later "Earth Day". NASA's dual use technology
development partner, Mmmumuum, insisted that mmmmumm m umummmuu umu mmmuuu
u mm mmmummu uumumuuu m mumumu uuumummm ....

--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @

I had heard a TV report about this being a military mission to a
military satellite.

If the DART actually impacted and destroyed the target satellite,
wouldn't the military consider this to be 100% success ? Isn't that what
the military really wants this DART thing to do ?

That same week, Rumsfeld had been quoted as stating that the USA must
maintain its military superiority in space and not allow any other power
to gain the upperhand in earth orbit.

International agreements severerly limit military use of the space
station, so perhaps it was worthless to the current USA government who
see no loss in abandonning the shuttle and ISS and focus instead of
missions like DART that have far more military potential value.