A month after an anomaly onboard the Proba-3 mission caused ground control to lose contact with the Coronagraph spacecraft, the mission team shares great news: the spacecraft has phoned home, re-establishing the lost connection.
After more than a month of silence, ESA's ground station in Villafranca, Spain, received telemetry from the Coronagraph spacecraft. Telemetry is a package of data sent by a spacecraft including information on its temperature, voltages, and health of onboard systems.
The Coronagraph is now in safe mode and stable, and the mission team and operators are running health checks on the spacecraft to understand if any parts of it have been damaged.
The spacecraft’s solar panel is facing the Sun, powering the essential electronics on board, and charging the battery with the remaining power.
After a month of floating in space and exposed to extreme cold, onboard systems need time to warm up before any major actions are taken.
“Hearing back from the Coronagraph is amazing news, and a great relief!” comments Damien Galano, Proba-3 Mission Manager. “Since the issue was detected a month ago, the mission team, operators and our industry partners have been working tirelessly to get the spacecraft back.
“When we got the call from the operators at Villafranca, the excitement in the team was palpable. But the hard work is not over yet – we need to carefully look at the data before we take any further steps.”
More updates will be posted on the Proba-3 blog as soon as they become available.
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