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:
“We never can tell how our lives may work to the account of the general good, and we are not wise enough to know if we have fulfilled our mission or not.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)
“I cannot be a materialist—but Oh, how is it possible that a God who speaks to all hearts can let Belgravia go laughing to a vicious luxury, and Whitechapel cursing to a filthy debauchery—such suffering, such dreadful suffering—and shall the short years of Christ’s mission atone for it all?”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“It is the mission of the twentieth century to elucidate the irrational.”
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