CrazyNeutrino said:
STEREO-B solar observatory is no longer lost in space
NASA has announced that a solar probe thought lost in space has been recovered and is now communicating with mission control. After 22 months of silence, the Deep Space Network (DSN) re-established contact with the unmanned Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory B (STEREO-B) on August 21 at 6:27 pm EDT. According to the space agency, the spacecraft is operational and recovery efforts are continuing.
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Awesome. Last time I looked, one of the two twin spacecraft Stereo A and Stereo B had stopped working and the other was still functioning. That was more than a year ago when both spacecraft were on the far side of the Sun.
The original mission was for just 3 months, wich is far shorter than I thought it would be. In 22 months the spacecraft would travel around the Sun about 420 degrees or so? So Stereo B is now very much closer to the Earth than it was when we lost contact. Clearly, NASA waited until the spacecraft was nearby before taking their best shot at reestablishing contact. And it worked!
For those of you who don’t know,
In case you don’t know, the three spacecraft SOHO, Stereo A and Stereo B view the Sun from 3 different angles, together giving a 3-D almost 360 degree view of solar flares. SOHO is much older than the other two, being the second oldest astronomy spacecraft still functioning. The technical specs of all three are very similar, SOHO has slightly better specs than the other two.
