True to this dying year of 2020, yesterday’s launch of NASA’s Perseverance Mars. The rover was not without problems.
As scheduled, a ULA Atlas V rocket carrying the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter gotten up of the Cape Canaveral S Air Forcetation in Florida yesterday morning. Now in space, the Mars 2020 mission is expected to hit the Red Planet in February 2021.
Everything seemed like a picture perfect but NASA said A couple of failed things happened during launch, none of which will jeopardize the mission.
As Atlas V sped up In space, telemetry signals sent to terrestrial antennas were unable to receive the incoming data. The spaceship was apparently too close to NASA’s deep space network, a system of ground antennas designed to communicate with deep space, causing signal saturation at ground receivers, preventing proper reception of telemetry data, according to NASA.
“This is a known problem that we have encountered on other planetary missions, including during the launch of NASA’s Curiosity rover in 2011,” said Matt Wallace, deputy project manager for the Mars 2020 mission, at NASA. statement. “The Perseverance team worked through prepared mitigation strategies that included detuning the receivers and aiming the antennas slightly off the spacecraft’s target to bring the signal within an acceptable range. We are now locked in telemetry after taking these measurements. ”
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Okay, so that’s not a big deal, but the second problem, while not serious, is still a work in progress – the spacecraft is currently in safe mode after a temperature anomaly.
The system uses a liquid freon circuit, in which heat from the spacecraft’s core is transported to the radiators in the cruise stage, the part of the vehicle that delivers the vehicle to Mars. A sizThe capable temperature interval between the hot inlet to the radiators and the cooler outlet of the radiators led to the caution software mode.
“When the spacecraft entered Earth’s shadow, the Sun was temporarily blocked by Earth and the outlet temperature dropped,” Wallace said. “This increased the difference between the hot inlet and the colder outlet. This transient differential triggered an alarm and caused the spacecraft to go into standby mode known as ‘safe mode.’ ”
Calling it a “transitional event,” Wallace said activating safe mode “during this transition phase is not problematic for Mars 2020.”
NASA says it has control over the problem, and mission controllers are now taking the necessary steps to return the spacecraft to normal cruise mode.
Phew. I’m glad these are minor issues. A major setback to the Mars 2020 mission is exactly what we don’t need at the moment.
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