A cryogenically cooled 5.5 year mission. Has that been done before?
Quote from: agman25 on 06/28/2012 06:11 pmA cryogenically cooled 5.5 year mission. Has that been done before?No but it is possible.This is not going to be a small vehicle. They have it listed on an F9 but something tells me this may end up on an FH.Per the OP, have to say its sort of like an "its about time" moment when it comes to this for me. We should have been getting a better idea of the asteroid and unknown object situation years ago, this should make a big difference.Here's to hoping they don't find anything heading this way.
Quote from: agman25 on 06/28/2012 06:11 pmA cryogenically cooled 5.5 year mission. Has that been done before?This is not going to be a small vehicle. They have it listed on an F9 but something tells me this may end up on an FH.
I don't know much about the B612 foundation.
Quote from: as58 on 06/28/2012 08:01 pmI don't know much about the B612 foundation. Hope this helps:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B612_Foundationhttp://b612foundation.org/
The B612 technology is not a big step, in fact it is well within the current technology, for instance a random searchpicked up this web site http://www.teledyne-si.com/infrared_visible_fpas/index.htmlthat shows a MWIR arrays at 16 megapixels in 2008, it is no stretch to assume a 50% improvement in the past 4 years. As for cost the array and ASIC is probably on order $10 million, my guess is the whole satellite is on order $100 million. Maybe Launch and operations total on order $250 million.
AFAICT, one of the big issues with mounting manned missions to NEAs is that the number of known targets is very small
Quote from: BrightLight on 06/28/2012 08:34 pmThe B612 technology is not a big step, in fact it is well within the current technology, for instance a random searchpicked up this web site http://www.teledyne-si.com/infrared_visible_fpas/index.htmlthat shows a MWIR arrays at 16 megapixels in 2008, it is no stretch to assume a 50% improvement in the past 4 years. As for cost the array and ASIC is probably on order $10 million, my guess is the whole satellite is on order $100 million. Maybe Launch and operations total on order $250 million.Not even close. This is easily $500 million+And the processing is not simple.
I should have said - order of magnitude, to me 250, 500, 750 is all about the same - more than 100 million, less then 1 billion.Processing is a matter of smart people working hard - If I were at B612 I would consider sending the data to a national lab...
Quote from: MP99 on 06/28/2012 09:11 pmAFAICT, one of the big issues with mounting manned missions to NEAs is that the number of known targets is very smallYou can count the number of possible targets on one hand after cutting off three fingers.A space-based survey is required if anybody is going to do that mission.