Myriad of woes doomed NASA test craft

[tocqueville]

Tue May 16, 5:31 PM ET

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Inexperience, mismanagement and technical problems caused a spacecraft to smash into its target during an automated test flight last year, the head of NASA's investigation team said on Tuesday.

The DART satellite -- short for Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology -- was considered important to NASA's future human missions to the moon and Mars in which robotics and automated navigation are essential.

Launched on April 15, 2005, it was supposed to spend about 24 hours making precise maneuvers around a communications satellite, but it shut down after 11 hours when it ran out of fuel.

DART repeatedly fired its steering thrusters in a futile attempt to correct bad navigation data, then butted into the communications satellite before shutting down.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060516/sc_nm/space_dart_dc_2

[Redstone]

1. Finally, an intelligent headline writer.

"A myriad of woes," correctly, rather than "myriad woes."

(The word comes from an old Greek military term for a formation of hoplites (infantry troops) numbering about ten thousand.)

My regards to that writer.

Redstone

[Kutjara]

3. Now if we can only...

...get people to realise that 'decimate' means '1 in 10,' and not total destruction. ;)

[Redstone]

4. Ah, that would be a futile struggle. That battle is lost already.

But I appreciate your mention of it.

Redstone

[benburch]

5. Actually, either would be correct.

Myriad has an english meaning of "countless."

[Kutjara]

2. Yes, it was all NASAs fault...

...again. Funny that no mention was made of the fact that NASA is expected to run a fully-featured space program on less money than the White House spends on lapel pins.

Yeah, funny that the Space Station is a shambles, the Shuttle falls out of the sky, the Mars probes go walkabout and even small scale launches land nosedown in the desert. I mean, if George Lucas can make interstellar spaceships for less than $100 mil, why can't NASA?