14 DAY TRIAL // Officials at the American space agency announce plans of restoring full functionality in a spacecraft that has been orbiting around Saturn since July 1, 2004. The Cassini orbiter has been offline for three weeks.
A glitch in its computer systems forced the probe to shut down and enter an especially-designed “safe mode,” which prevented further damage from the malfunction. Since then, the satellite has produced no scientific data.
All of its telescopes, cameras and sensors have been locked, and researchers in charge of managing the mission said from the start that they plan to gain those abilities back on November 24.
The dormant orbiter has been in safe mode since November 2, while computer scientists investigated methods of restoring its functionality.
The original glitch was caused by an erroneous bit of data sent from Earth, which was most likely distorted along the way. A solar flare might have been responsible.
Cassini's command and data system computers were immediately affected, but researchers have since developed a new set of commands to upload to the spacecraft. It was sheer bad luck that the wrong bit of information affected the probe.
“The bit flip happened in exactly the wrong location – almost anyplace else would have merely resulted in a rejected command – but the spacecraft responded exactly as programmed,” says Bob Mitchell.
The expert holds an appointment at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, where he is the Cassini program manager, Space reports.
“Cassini is in excellent shape, and we are looking forward to the next seven years of this mission,” the researcher wrote in a mission status update earlier this month.
During the time-out Cassini took, the spacecraft failed to carry out scientific observations of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. The probe passed in close to the cloud-covered space rock on November 11.
The JPL team managed to send commands to the Saturnine orbiter last week. The data told it to reboot its computers, and to slowly reactivate its science instruments.
Mission controllers say that, with enough luck, it could be that the JPL group will be able to extract the science data that was collected shortly before the November 2 glitch occurred.
“Playback from the computer's memory is enabling engineers to extract science data collected before the spacecraft entered safe mode,” they said.