ESA… GOCe Glitch (SATCOM) - [SatNews] Another major satellite has experienced difficulties, this one in the form of a software glitch.

* Satellite needs a reboot? A Windows Update? Well sort of … And you think your computer has problems? Imagine if it was out in space? and you couldn’t just call Alan Spicer to fix it!

http://www.satnews.com/cgi-bin/story.cgi?number=1593012507

The European Space Agency has reported the GOCe satellite has been troubled with such a difficulty since July. GOCe is designed to map the gravitational field of Earth, but has been unable to send its collected data to receiving stations. A patch is currently being worked on to correct the telemetry problem and the hopes are for a radio link to be installed by next month. GOCe has already completed two-thirds of its mission, with many of its science objectives already completed. The satellite was launched on March 17th in 2009.

The ESA describes GOCE as “the Formula 1″ of satellites due to its avant-garde design — it is a five-metre (16.25-feet) craft that is arrow-like in appearance, rather than the usual boxy dimensions. The satellite possesses stabilizing fins as it orbits Earth at an altitude of just 250 kilometres (156 miles) where there is still a lingering atmosphere. This is not the first difficulty for GOCe, which actually had a primary computer chip failure in February of this year. This required a switch over to the backup computer.

http://www.satnews.com/cgi-bin/display_weekly.cgi

—
Alan Spicer
 
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This entry was posted on 2. September 2010 at 04:35 and is filed under Satellite Voice and Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.