Jump to content
Join the Unexplained Mysteries community today! It's free and setting up an account only takes a moment.
- Sign In or Create Account -

Kepler Spacecraft in Emergency Mode


Czero 101

Recommended Posts

Mission Manager Update: Kepler spacecraft in emergency mode

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/mission-manager-update-kepler-spacecraft-in-emergency-mode

During a scheduled contact on Thursday, April 7, mission operations engineers discovered that the Kepler spacecraft was in Emergency Mode (EM). EM is the lowest operational mode and is fuel intensive. Recovering from EM is the team's priority at this time.

The mission has declared a spacecraft emergency, which provides priority access to ground-based communications at the agency's Deep Space Network.

Initial indications are that Kepler entered EM approximately 36 hours ago, before mission operations began the maneuver to orient the spacecraft to point toward the center of the Milky Way for the K2 mission's microlensing observing campaign.

The spacecraft is nearly 75 million miles from Earth, making the communication slow. Even at the speed of light, it takes 13 minutes for a signal to travel to the spacecraft and back.

The last regular contact with the spacecraft was on April. 4. The spacecraft was in good health and operating as expected.

Cz

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

This is being reported by several sources. Forbes: http://www.forbes.co...e/#af2b99929014

Kepler is currently 75 million miles from Earth, which means it takes 13 minutes for a radio signal to make a round trip to the satellite and back. NASA has given the recovery top priority on the Deep Space Network, which is a network of large radio antennas used to communicate with spacecraft in our solar system. At this point it is not known what triggered Kepler’s emergency mode, or whether NASA will be able to revive the spacecraft.
Edited by Lilly
added quote
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's amazing that Kepler was able t continue producing incredible results after losing control of two of its four reaction wheels. K2, using photons from the Sun and the two remaining reaction wheels to steer, bears testament to the genius of the engineering team. If this was Kepler's last science then all concerned can be more than rightfully proud of how successful and vllauabe this spacecraft was to our inderstanding of teh galaxy.

Edited by Merc14
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mission Manager Update: Kepler Recovered from Emergency and Stable

Mission operations engineers have successfully recovered the Kepler spacecraft from Emergency Mode (EM). On Sunday morning, the spacecraft reached a stable state with the communication antenna pointed toward Earth, enabling telemetry and historical event data to be downloaded to the ground. The spacecraft is operating in its lowest fuel-burn mode.

arrow3.gifRead more...

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mission Manager Update: Kepler Remains Stable as Health Check Continues

The Kepler spacecraft remains stable as the process of returning it to science continues. The cause of the anomaly, first reported on April 8, remains under investigation.

Since Sunday morning the spacecraft has remained safely "parked" in a stable pointed configuration called Point Rest State. In this state, fuel usage remains low and the communication link to Earth is good. As of Tuesday, mission operations engineers had downlinked all the necessary data from Kepler to triage the situation and plan the steps toward recovery.

arrow3.gifRead more...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mission Manager Update: Kepler Recovered and Returned to the K2 Mission

The Kepler spacecraft has been recovered and, as of 8:30 a.m. PDT today, it is back on the job as the K2 mission searching for exoplanets—planets beyond our solar system.

The team began the process of returning the spacecraft to science late on Tuesday. The process involved a succession of steps over the course of the next two days. The pointing tables and science targets—instructions that tell the spacecraft where to look and at what—were reloaded and confirmed, onboard logs and counters were reset and a new command sequence was created, tested and uploaded to account for the late start of the campaign. The spacecraft is now ready for science operations, officially starting K2's new gravitational microlensing campaign, known as Campaign 9 or C9.

arrow3.gifRead more...

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.