Solar-Eclipsing Probe Back From the Dead After a Month of Silence | An anomaly caused ESA’s Proba-3 to ghost ground control, but now the spacecraft has finally made contact.
Solar-Eclipsing Probe Back From the Dead After a Month of Silence | An anomaly caused ESA’s Proba-3 to ghost ground control, but now the spacecraft has finally made contact.
>A pair of spacecraft has been flying in formation, creating an artificial solar eclipse to help scientists probe the elusive outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere. For the past month, however, one of the spacecraft has been silent after suffering an in-flight anomaly, leaving its partner hanging. But now, the probe has finally phoned home and may be ready to resume operations soon.
>The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Proba-3 mission recently reestablished connection with ground control. After a month of silence, the agency’s ground station in Villafranca, Spain, received telemetry data from the Proba-3 Coronagraph spacecraft.
>“Hearing back from the Coronagraph is amazing news, and a great relief!” Damien Galano, Proba-3 mission manager, said in a statement. “When we got the call from the operators at Villafranca, the excitement in the team was palpable.”
atape_1 on
Very good news, probes rarely come back online after being out of action for that long.
Brenda_Heels on
“An anomaly”. Riiiiight. Aliens were probing the probe.
3 Comments
>A pair of spacecraft has been flying in formation, creating an artificial solar eclipse to help scientists probe the elusive outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere. For the past month, however, one of the spacecraft has been silent after suffering an in-flight anomaly, leaving its partner hanging. But now, the probe has finally phoned home and may be ready to resume operations soon.
>The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Proba-3 mission recently reestablished connection with ground control. After a month of silence, the agency’s ground station in Villafranca, Spain, received telemetry data from the Proba-3 Coronagraph spacecraft.
>“Hearing back from the Coronagraph is amazing news, and a great relief!” Damien Galano, Proba-3 mission manager, said in a statement. “When we got the call from the operators at Villafranca, the excitement in the team was palpable.”
Very good news, probes rarely come back online after being out of action for that long.
“An anomaly”. Riiiiight. Aliens were probing the probe.