Khaberni - The European Space Agency (ESA) announced that it has regained contact with the Coronagraph spacecraft, one of the two satellites that form the "Proba-3" mission.
The Coronagraph spacecraft had been silent since mid-February, when a technical malfunction caused it to stop operating.
"Hearing news from the Coronagraph spacecraft is great and very comforting," said Damien Galano, mission manager of "Proba-3", in a statement on Thursday, March 19.
The Coronagraph spacecraft and its partner vehicle, Occulter, were launched together into Earth's orbit from India in December 2024. The two vehicles work together to generate solar eclipses. As the name suggests, the Occulter vehicle blocks the solar disk, allowing the Coronagraph spacecraft to study the sun's faint outer atmosphere, or corona, which is usually overwhelmed by the star's immense brightness.
This operation requires extremely precise flying in a specific formation: the two spacecraft sail through space about 150 meters (500 feet) apart from each other, maintaining their positions with precision up to one millimeter. If either of the two vehicles fails, the mission effectively ends.
Thus, last month's events were bad news for the "Proba-3" team, as European Space Agency officials clarified in a statement on March 6 that a malfunction in the Coronagraph spacecraft "led to a series of reactions that caused a gradual loss of orientation (spacecraft direction) and prevented it from entering the expected safe mode".
However, things have now improved, as the latest updates have indicated, where the European Space Agency's ground station in Villafranca, Spain, received a data packet from the Coronagraph spacecraft, providing information on the spacecraft's voltage and temperature, among other characteristics.
The spacecraft is stable and currently in a "safe mode" for protection. But it has not yet come out of the danger zone, as the mission team is conducting checks to make sure it has not suffered any damage, as said by European Space Agency officials in an update published Thursday, March 19.
They added: "The spacecraft's solar panel is facing the sun, powering the onboard core electronics, and charging the battery with the remaining energy. After a month of floating in space and experiencing extreme cold, the onboard systems need time to warm up before any major actions are taken".
