NASA reconnects with lost spacecraft for the first time in almost two years
An artist's rendering of STEREO-B in orbit around the sun. Photo: NASA
NASA has reestablished its connection with a ‘sun watching’ spacecraft that has been out of reach for more than 22 months.
STEREO-B is one of two spacecraft currently on the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory mission.
It had its connection to NASA severed during a routine test in October 2014.
STEREO-B and its counterpart – you guessed it – STEREO-A, were launched in 2006 for what was to be a two-year mission.
They have both outlasted their expected lifespan.
When functioning together, they are able to provide simultaneous viewpoints of our sun, supplying scientists with unique data on our closest star and its surrounding ‘space weather’.
In 2014, mission operators quickly realised that on its current trajectory, there would likely be long periods where sun interference could affect the craft for months at a time and so began testing equipment to make sure the craft could survive the blackouts.
Its hard reset function was being tested when the sun blocked its view of the Earth, crippling its communication ability.
STEREO-A and STEREO-B are nearly identical spacecraft. Photo: NASA
“We had to take a spacecraft that was meant to talk to Earth every day and get it ready for over three months of radio silence,” said Dan Ossing, mission operations manager for the STEREO mission.
Reconnecting with the craft proved difficult as scientists could not determine what frequency it would be listening to at any particular moment.
“Typically, operators will sweep through the range of frequencies that the spacecraft’s receiver can pick up until the spacecraft locks on to one, a process that usually takes a minute or two. But this is impractical for STEREO-B, given the huge distance, which yields a round-trip communications delay of over half an hour,” NASA said in a statement.
In red and blue: the lines of communication to both spacecraft. Photo: NASA
Now they’ve reconnected, NASA’s scientists are attempting to charge STEREO-B’s batteries so it can communicate and continue its task.
“The STEREO Missions Operations team plans further recovery processes to assess observatory health, re-establish attitude control, and evaluate all subsystems and instruments.” said NASA science writer Karen C Fox.
NASA reported that during this time, STEREO-A had continued to function normally.
It is the third mission of its kind for NASA .
