
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope Ends 16-Year Mission - cyanbane
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/science/nasa-spitzer-space-telescope.html
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zanderwohl
The telescope ran out of coolant in 2009, but it continued operating for quite
a long time after that. The article says that one of the biggest concerns is
the difficulty of communicating with it, as it falls further from Earth in its
Earth-trailing orbit.

Compared to the 2.5-year mission specification, its lifetime was long. I know
NASA over-engineers, and extends each mission as long as _some_ hardware
operates (see Opportunity), but that's still an impressive mission lifetime.

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CamperBob2
A nice article, but it would have been good to hear more about the specific
justifications for shutting the telescope down in advance of JWST's launch.
$14 million/year doesn't seem like that much, in the grand scheme of things.

Heck, why shut it down at all? Document the communication protocols and
orbital elements, and turn it over to amateurs.[1]

We seem to have put an awful lot of our eggs in the JWST basket.

[1] [https://uhf-satcom.com/dsn/dsnstart](https://uhf-satcom.com/dsn/dsnstart)

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ceejayoz
It ran out of coolant for its primary instruments, and the battery can only
manage a short period each day for data transmission.

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CamperBob2
As the article says, they've already been working around that. It can no
longer meet its rated performance specs, but it's far from useless.

