NASA has not reestablished contact with its MAVEN Mars orbiter since a planned communications blackout ended Jan. 16. As SPACE reports, an “analysis of a fragment of tracking data from the day contact was lost suggests MAVEN was rotating in an unexpected manner as it emerged from behind Mars and was no longer in its planned orbit, according to NASA.”
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Tag: MAVEN
MAVEN Telemetry Reveals Changes to Spacecraft Orbit and Rotation
Space News reports, “New analysis suggests that problems with NASA’s MAVEN Mars orbiter may be more serious than a simple communications glitch. NASA said Dec. 9 that it lost contact with the spacecraft three days earlierafter MAVEN failed to resume communications following a pass behind Mars as viewed from Earth. At the time, the agency provided few details and did not indicate the problem extended beyond the spacecraft’s communications systems.”
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NASA Reports Loss of Communication with MAVEN Mars Orbiter
Space News report, “NASA has lost contact with a Mars orbiter that has circled the planet for more than a decade, collecting science data and serving as a communications relay.”
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