14 DAY TRIAL // The star-tracking instrument aboard the European Space Agency's (ESA) Venus Express orbiter has been disabled by the massive solar flare and coronal mass ejection produced by the Sun over the past couple of days. Experts are hopeful that they will be able to bring the device back online soon.
The damage was most likely produced by the strong radiations released by the Sun. The geomagnetic storm triggered high above Earth's atmosphere – from interactions between highly-charged solar particles and our magnetosphere – was the strongest in 6 years.
Before reaching Earth, the solar particle cloud first grazed Venus, affecting the long-lived European spacecraft in its orbit. Venus Express has been studying our neighboring planet since April 2006. It was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan.
The spacecraft took off at 03:33 UTC on November 9, 2005, aboard a Russian-built Soyuz-FG/Fregat delivery system. Currently, ESA has allotted funds to continue operating the spacecraft until at least December 31, 2014.
According to mission controllers, significant amounts of radiations struck VEX on Tuesday, March 6, at 8:40 pm EST (0140 GMT March 7), essentially blinding the orbiter's startracker cameras.
What this means is that the instruments were no longer able to pick up any stars, Venus Express spacecraft operation manager Octavio Camino says. The expert is based at ESA European Space Operations Center (ESOC), in Darmstadt, Germany.
“We were not able to detect any stars, so we decided to switch to the B unit, but we saw exactly the same thing. Both of them were blinded by heavy solar activity,” the expert tells Space in an interview.
“Since then, we have not been able to get them back on track, so we are doing a lot of things in order to keep the spacecraft in a safe configuration,” he adds. Startracker cameras are used to analyze stellar configuration in the sky, and then calculate a spacecraft's position and orientation in space.
“This information is calibrated with another tool, called gyroscopes, that tell the spacecraft what it's pointing at and what its angular rotation is,” explains the head of the ESA Solar and Planetary Mission Operations, Paolo Ferri.
“So the spacecraft uses the gyroscope information plus the calibrated information from startrackers to realize its current attitude,” he concludes.
ESA experts are currently working on bringing the affected VEX instrument back online. They are expecting the spacecraft to make a full recovery. Keep an eye on this space for updates on their progress.