An Amateur Astronomer has made contact with a long-lost NASA satellite, as per the reports by the NASA Officials on Jan. 30.
The Imager for Magneto pause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) satellite was launched in March 2000, and exceeded its initial two-year mission by operating through 2005. However, NASA controllers lost contact with the satellite in December 2005, bringing the mission to an abrupt end.
Now, engineers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have confirmed that a signal detected by the amateur astronomer (who was not named in the statement) is actually from the IMAGE satellite. The engineers used NASA's Deep Space Network — which consists of a series of ground-based radio telescopes — to identify the signal.
History :
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IMAGE Spacecraft before launch
Credit : NASA |
The IMAGE spacecraft was launched from Vandenberg AFB on 25 March 2000, at 20:34:43 UT.
IMAGE was the first satellite mission dedicated to imaging the Earth's magnetosphere, the region of space controlled by the Earth's magnetic field and containing extremely tenuous plasmas of both solar and terrestrial origin. Invisible to standard astronomical observing techniques, these populations of ions and electrons have traditionally been studied by means of localized measurements with charged particle detectors, magnetometers, and electric field instruments. Instead of such in situ measurements, IMAGE employed a variety of imaging techniques to "see the invisible" and to produce the first comprehensive global images of the plasma populations in the inner magnetosphere. With these images, space scientists were able to observe, in a way never before possible, the large-scale dynamics of the magnetosphere and the interactions among its constituent plasma populations.
IMAGE used neutral atom, ultraviolet, and radio imaging techniques to:
Identify the dominant mechanisms for injecting plasma into the magnetosphere on substorm and magnetic storm time scales;Determine the directly driven response of the magnetosphere to solar wind changes; and,Discover how and where magnetospheric plasmas are energized, transported, and subsequently lost during substorms and magnetic storms.
After successfully completing and extending its initial two-year mission in 2002, the satellite unexpectedly failed to make contact on a routine pass on Dec. 18, 2005. After a 2007 eclipse failed to induce a reboot, the mission was declared over.
Possible Causes of Failure :
As per the Reports by the IMAGE Failure Review Board
The agency said on September 19, 2006 that
Contact with the IMAGE spacecraft unexpectedly stopped on December 18, 2005 when failure
to establish a routine communications contact with the Deep Space Network (DSN) occurred.
Multiple attempts were made to reestablish communications, all of which have been
unsuccessful.
The Reporting of the Board concluded the following possible cause of failure.
"It is likely IMAGE became unable to continue routine communications due to a Single
Event Upset (SEU) induced ‘instant trip’ of the Solid State Power Controller (SSPC)
supplying power to the Transponder. However, several other possible, but very unlikely,
causes exist that cannot be completely eliminated. A recurrence of the anomaly is
possible and cannot be prevented. The previous anomaly history of IMAGE was not a harbinger of the current failure. "
"However, the anomaly history of EO-1 and WMAP were, since three similar SSPC
instant trip anomalies had been observed between the EO-1 and WMAP missions.
The operational response to the anomaly was timely, appropriate, and complete.
It is unlikely that the IMAGE mission can be revived. However, the October 2007
eclipse season may permit a Transponder SSPC reset (and a re-powering of the
Transponder), but this is not certain given that the main bus reset level may really be 21
If revival occurs, the mission should be able to continue as before with no limitations."
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| Credit : NASA ( IMAGE Spacecraft Schematics ) |
The main Mechanical failure was reported to be the inability of the system to control the situation as some of IMAGER Technologies were still in development stage.
The Board said...
"The SSPC provides power service to the Transponder in addition to circuit breaker like
functionality. Nominally, a trip of the device is reported in its status telemetry lines that are
continuously monitored by onboard Failure Detection and Correction (FDC) logic. This allows
the FDC to command the SSPC to close reapplying power to the Transponder. However, due to
a design oversight in the device, instant trip events (those of high but short lived current
transients) are not reported in the status telemetry lines, allowing the device to be in an open state
while still reporting a closed state. The result is that the Transponder remains OFF due to the
fact that the FDC logic detects the SSPC to still be closed (due to the erroneous status line indication). The SSPC’s erroneous reporting of instant trip events was not known at the time the
IMAGE mission was under development".
After all this challenges NASA attempted many turns to re-establish communications with the satellite. But all vent in vain. IMAGE was designed to image Earth’s magnetosphere and produce the first comprehensive global images of the plasma populations in this region. After successfully completing and extending its initial two-year mission in 2002, the satellite unexpectedly failed to make contact on a routine pass on Dec. 18, 2005. After a 2007 eclipse failed to induce a reboot, the mission was declared over.
The Major Breakthrough :
However after 12 years an updated from NASA Shocked the World when the announcement was made.
Jan. 29, 2018, Update ( NASA OFFICIAL UPDATED )
"After an amateur astronomer recorded observations of a satellite in high Earth orbit on Jan. 20, 2018, his initial research suggested it was the Imager for Magneto pause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) — a NASA mission launched into orbit around Earth on March 25, 2000.
Seeking to ascertain whether the signal indeed came from IMAGE, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, coordinated the use of five separate antennas to acquire radio frequency signals from the object.
As of Monday, Jan. 29, observations from all five sites were consistent with the radio frequency characteristics expected of IMAGE. Specifically, the radio frequency showed a spike at the expected center frequency, as well as side bands where they should be for IMAGE. Oscillation of the signal was also consistent with the last known spin rate for IMAGE.
(JAN 31 UPDATED) Finally NASA Confirms the signals....
"The identity of the satellite re-discovered on Jan. 20, 2018, has been confirmed as NASA’s IMAGE satellite.
On the afternoon of Jan. 30, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Maryland, successfully collected telemetry data from the satellite. The signal showed that the space craft ID was 166 — the ID for IMAGE.
The NASA team has been able to read some basic housekeeping data from the spacecraft, suggesting that at least the main control system is operational.
Scientists and engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will continue to try to analyze the data from the spacecraft to learn more about the state of the spacecraft. This process will take a week or two to complete as it requires attempting to adapt old software and databases of information to more modern systems."
Note: The credit for the Information goes to NASA
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