Last week, NASA revealed that it lost contact with a vital Martian probe that’s been studying the Red Planet for more than a decade. Despite the mission team’s efforts to restore communication with the orbiter, their latest status report does not bode well.
On Monday, NASA confirmed that it hasn’t received telemetry from the MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft since December 4, but said the team did recover a brief fragment of tracking data from December 6. Analysis of that signal suggests that the orbiter was rotating in an “unexpected manner” and that its orbital trajectory may have changed.
“The team continues to analyze tracking data to understand the most likely scenarios leading to the loss of signal. Efforts to reestablish contact with MAVEN also continue,” the NASA statement reads.
Decade around Mars is already impressive! But unexpected rotation does sound bad. May be misfiring of trusters 😕
Possibly.
The article mentions the spacecraft had an issue years ago with its IMU so they patched the software to use the stars as a reference to maintain attitude. Maybe that glitched out and in trying to correct itself started to spin out of control?
If I remember correctly, some deep space probe had a navigation problem because the star that was elected for tracking for navigation was a duoble star, what weirded the navigation system 😅