The Small Spacecraft Technology Program works to utilize the new functions and features of small spacecrafts for NASA’s science, exploration and space missions and as a platform for testing and demonstrating new technologies that could be used for various sizes of spacecraft and systems. The two sun-watching spacecraft were launched in 2006 to complete a two-year mission to study The Sun and better understand its behavior.
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STEREO-A continues to work normally. Most recently, they have attempted a monthly recovery operation using NASA’s Deep Space Network, or DSN, which tracks and communicates with missions throughout space. Specifically, STEREO aims to figure out the origins of coronal mass ejections – massive explosions of charged particles that sometimes shoot out from the Sun. It’s one of two spacecraft that over the course of their lifetimes have been viewing the sun from points opposite from Earth.
“These plasma bursts travel all the way to Earth and collide with our planet’s magnetic field, creating powerful geomagnetic storms that can damage communications satellites and mess with our planet’s power grid”, stated NASA. STEREO-Ahead (STEREO-A) orbits slightly closer to the Sun than the Earth, and STEREO-Behind (STEREO-B) orbits at a farther distance from the Sun than the Earth. STEREO-A worked great. STEREO-B, not so much.
For the first time in nearly two years, NASA has re-established its connection with a long-lost spacecraft. Prior to the reset, both STEREO-A and STEREO-B had moved to the far side of the Sun, making communication with the vehicles hard.
NASA chose to angle the antennas away and put both crafts in a year-long safe mode until it was safe to communicate with Earth again. To prepare for this, NASA put the two vehicles through a series of tests and resets to see if they would be ready for the repositioning and hibernation.
After attempting to regain contact for almost two years, NASA has finally reestablished communications with the sun-studying satellite, STEREO-B. Engineers believe STEREO-B is doing just that, limiting the amount of sunlight that falls on its solar arrays.
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“The bad IMU told STEREO-B that it was spinning, even though it was stationary”, Dan Ossing, the mission operations manager, said last December. The agency has since been trying to reestablish contact, and now that they have, “The STEREO Missions Operations team plans further recovery processes to assess observatory health, re-establish attitude control, and evaluate all subsystems and instruments”.
