ESA declares Envisat lost
Posted: Thu, May 10, 2012, 11:02 AM ET (1502 GMT)
The European Space Agency said Wednesday it was declaring the end of the mission for its Envisat earth sciences satellite, more than a month after contract was lost with the spacecraft. ESA lost contact with the ten-year-old spacecraft on April 8, and subsequent efforts to restore communications with the satellite have failed. ESA even obtained photos of the satellite from a French high-resolution imagery satellite, which showed no obvious signs of damage that could be causing the outage. While ESA has declared the spacecraft's mission over, engineers will spend the next two months on additional efforts to restore contact, acknowledging that the odds of success are low. Envisat launched in 2002 on a five-year mission, although ESA officials had hoped to keep the spacecraft operating until the launch of the first next-generation Sentinel spacecraft in 2013.
The European Space Agency said Wednesday it was declaring the end of the mission for its Envisat earth sciences satellite, more than a month after contract was lost with the spacecraft. ESA lost contact with the ten-year-old spacecraft on April 8, and subsequent efforts to restore communications with the satellite have failed. ESA even obtained photos of the satellite from a French high-resolution imagery satellite, which showed no obvious signs of damage that could be causing the outage. While ESA has declared the spacecraft's mission over, engineers will spend the next two months on additional efforts to restore contact, acknowledging that the odds of success are low. Envisat launched in 2002 on a five-year mission, although ESA officials had hoped to keep the spacecraft operating until the launch of the first next-generation Sentinel spacecraft in 2013.
Related Links:
| <<previous article | next article>> |
|
news in brief
|
|
|
|
news links
|
|
Wednesday, March 4
Testing ozone-monitoring satellite’s solar wings
ESA — 7:16 am ET (1216 GMT) Building a circular economy in space: ESA studies pave the way
ESA — 7:15 am ET (1215 GMT) Elon Musk’s SpaceX Is Said to Add Citigroup to IPO Bank Lineup
Bloomberg News — 7:04 am ET (1204 GMT) SpaceX $1.75 Trillion Valuation Is ‘Justifiable,’ PitchBook Says
Bloomberg News — 7:03 am ET (1203 GMT) A Plan B for space? On the risks of concentrating national space power in private hands
The Conversation — 7:03 am ET (1203 GMT) |
