NASA's Venerable Comet Hunter Wraps Up Mission

This seems a bit suspect IMHO. At 33 minutes past 4, no less.

www.jpl.nasa.gov...

"At 33 minutes after 4 p.m. PDT today, NASA's Stardust spacecraft finished its last transmission to Earth. The transmission came on the heels of the venerable spacecraft's final rocket burn, which was designed to provide insight into how much fuel remained aboard after its encounter with comet Tempel 1 in February.

"Stardust has been teaching us about our solar system since it was launched in 1999," said Stardust-NExT project manager Tim Larson from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It makes sense that its very last moments would be providing us with data we can use to plan deep space mission operations in the future."

Why would they need to do a final burn to see how much fuel is left

Surely, they must know how much fuel the engines use?
Surely, they must know how long the engines were running?
Surely, they must know how much fuel the craft was carrying?

It would seem obvious that to know the answers to those three questions would tell them exactly how much fuel they had used, Yes?

And the timing? What with Elenin flying through

It explains it quite well in the link why they did it, they can estimate but not be completely sure on how much fuel is left, I don't think there is anything suspicious and you are just over reacting.

reply to post by Mythkiller

And the timing? What with Elenin flying through

Interesting, they want some people to know they planned in advance for Elenin?

You know JPL, without a dilemma some of those guys don't notice..

reply to post by Bordon81

Interesting, they want some people to know they planned in advance for Elenin?

Where does this come from? Read the article, please. It has nothing to do with Elenin.

reply to post by Mythkiller


Is this somewhat suspicious...I dont not know much about the two, or if it correlates, but the discovery shuttle had its last launch March 9, 2011.

Imagine ….. “You Are There ! ” … in the middle of the whooping, cheering crowd at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) for the historic final launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on the STS-133 mission to the International Space Station.

and whatever this means...

Only 1 or 2 flight remain for the Space Shuttle Program until they are forcibly retired for lack of money. Next up is the launch of Endeavour on April 19 at dusk. Should make for some extremely cool videos and snapshots! Get your gear ready!

LINK

reply to post by DJW001


My point was it's a Comet Hunter.

never said I was an expert on the subject thats why I put it out there

It would seem obvious that to know the answers to those three questions would tell them exactly how much fuel they had used, Yes?

They said in the article that there was 146 seconds of burn time left after the Tempel 1 mission.
A little interesting since 73 is one of those rune numbers that the US Pentagon agencies have used in the past.

Is there a projected track for NExT?