Mission
SIM Lite would have operated in an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit. The SIM would have drifted away from Earth at the rate of 0.1 AU per year. At the end of the planned mission, it would have reached a distance of 82 million km from Earth. This would have taken approximately 5½ years. The Sun would have continuously shone on the spacecraft, allowing it to avoid the occultations of target stars and eclipses of the sun that would occur in an Earth orbit.
Had it been launched, SIM would have performed scientific research for five years.
Read more about this topic: Space Interferometry Mission
Famous quotes containing the word mission:
“Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story—a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.”
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