The set-up will be familiar to the Cluster mission controllers, who have had to battle with 20th-Century ground control software built on an obsolete operating system. ( You can read the full story of the mission here and listen to a radio programme I produced about it here.) I checked with Nasa, which has assured me that the spacecraft are still being controlled from the same beige cubicle in an annex of its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) that I visited in 2017, marked with a homemade cardboard sign reading: "Mission critical hardware – PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH". Launched almost 46 years ago in 1977, the twin Voyager probes continue to send back data from beyond the Solar System. This challenge of maintaining spacecraft long after their original best-before date was highlighted recently when controllers briefly lost contact with Voyager 2. "It has a very enthusiastic group of scientists working on the mission – some of them are waiting for it to finally end so they can enjoy their retirement.Ĭluster is one of many missions still alive today thanks to the skill and ingenuity of the engineering and science teams behind them, problem-solving their way through glitches, malfunctions and near-catastrophic failures. "The mission was only designed to last three years," says Cluster's mission operations manager at the European Space Operations Centre (Esoc) at Darmstadt in Germany, Bruno Sousa. The satellites (named Rumba, Salsa, Samba and Tango, since you ask) have just celebrated 23 years in orbit. But within months, work had begun on a replacement mission, Cluster II.ĭesigned to fly in formation to investigate the interaction between charged particles from the Sun – the solar wind – and the magnetic bubble surrounding the Earth, known as the magnetosphere, Cluster II ranks as one of the most successful and long-lasting science missions ever flown. The disaster was one of the European Space Agency's (Esa) most visible and spectacular failures. VIPs who had been sipping champagne on the outdoor viewing gallery moments earlier were ushered back inside to avoid being injured by the falling debris. Their remains rained down over the South American jungle as the Ariane 5 rocket veered off course and exploded. It took more than 10 years to design and build Europe's four identical Cluster satellites for launch and just 39 seconds to lose them all in an enormous fireball. 4 June 1996, European space port, French Guiana…
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |