The spacecraft has been plagued by some glitches lately

Nov 25, 2011 14:35 GMT  ·  By

After suffering a series of errors last month, all related to its onboard data storage systems, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft is now slowly being returned to active scientific service. Some of its instruments have already been brought online again.

Mission controllers are working around to clock to fix the issues that plague the old spacecraft. Mars Express launched to the Red Planet on June 2, 2003, aboard a Soyuz-FG delivery system. It achieved orbital insertion on December 25 the same year, and has been studying the planet ever since.

Over its long years at Mars, the spacecraft suffered a number of glitches that affected its scientific instruments for certain amounts of time. However, mission controllers were always able to bring it back online in due course, addressing all problems as they came along.

This time, it took a little bit longer to restore functionality to the orbiter, since numerous glitches occurred in short succession. Originally, Mars Express was only supposed to fly for about two years, but its mission was extended for 6 more, up to today.

According to ESA, the probe has thus far sent back some of the most amazing images of the Martian surface ever produced. The quality of its scientific data is also beyond reproach, and extremely detailed as well. But the orbiter's run ended in mid-October.

With its Solid-State Mass Memory (SSMM) system out of commission, there was no way for the scientific data its instruments collected to be saved and then relayed back to Earth. As such, all the data-collecting tools were shut down as well.

While analyzing the SSMM system, experts decided that there is no way they can address whatever issues are plaguing it directly. As such, they developed lines of code meant to ensure the spacecraft can operate within parameters even without relying on its memory.

This is a bit tricky, since the SSMM performs a number of critical tasks. These include cleaning up excess data from spacecraft subsystems, storing Earth-bound data temporarily, and holding whatever commands experts at the ESA Space Operations Center (ESOC), in Darmstadt, Germany, send.

“The entire team have worked intensively to implement a provisional fix. Limited science observations were able to resume on October 31. This problem was unanticipated by the spacecraft designers, so everyone on the mission control team is learning as we go,” Mars Express spacecraft operations manager Michel Denis explains.

“This has been our first permanent anomaly in eight years of orbit. Solving it is like writing a really terrific mystery novel,” Mars Express spacecraft operations engineer James Godfrey concludes, as quoted by SpaceRef.