Kepler lives (sort of)! Backup thrusters kick in, "situation no longer critical"
6 replies, posted
[quote]Following the apparent failure of reaction wheel 4 on May 11, 2013, engineers were successful at transitioning the spacecraft from a Thruster-Controlled Safe Mode to Point Rest State at approximately 3:30 p.m. PDT on Wednesday, May 15, 2013. [B]The spacecraft has remained safe and stable in this attitude and is no longer considered to be in a critical situation.[/B]
As part of a normal spacecraft response to a pointing error, redundant electronics were automatically powered off to isolate them as a possible cause. However, once the team recovered the spacecraft to Point Rest State (PRS) and exonerated those systems, they were turned back on, providing full redundancy to the spacecraft. [B]The reaction wheels remain offline.[/B] The photometer, which was turned off to reduce the power load, will be turned back on in the near future to keep thermal conditions of the spacecraft within nominal operating parameters.[B] Kepler is not in science data collection.[/B][/quote]
[url=http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/keplerm-20130521.html]Source[/url]
Yay!
Safe? Stable? Critical condition?
Are we talking about Kepler the person or a space probe
[QUOTE=Megadick;40736324]Safe? Stable? Critical condition?
Are we talking about Kepler the person or a space probe[/QUOTE]
Perhaps read the first line of the article, and not solely the title.
-snip-
ninja'd
doesn't this still mean it's basically useless because thrusters can't maintain orientation and it can only do certain things because of that
[QUOTE=Karmah;40736365]Perhaps read the first line of the article, and not solely the title.[/QUOTE]
yeah I know I was making fun of the terminology
