Space Probe Might Lack Nitrogen to Push It Home.

[elleng]

A do-it-yourself team of engineers trying to lasso an aged but still operational NASA space probe may have run into an insurmountable obstacle: Tanks on the spacecraft that were once full of nitrogen gas, needed to fire the thrusters, appear to have drained empty.

Without thrusters, there is no way to push the 36-year-old spacecraft, the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3, or ISEE-3, onto a trajectory to be captured back in Earth orbit. Instead, ISEE-3, which is otherwise in working order, will just fly by.

“Odds are, there is nothing we can do,” Keith Cowing, one of the leaders of the effort, said after a two-hour troubleshooting session on Wednesday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/10/science/space/space-probe-might-lack-nitrogen-to-push-it-home.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumSmallMedia&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

[longship]

1. Too damned bad.

There was great hope in this. But it is a pretty damned old probe.

Shit!

[frylock]

2. nice effort, nonetheless..

wonder if they're second guessing some of those earlier firings?