ESA Satellite Recovers: Total Loss To Geostationary

Posted by timothy on Wednesday February 19, 2003 @05:58AM from the falling-forward-all-the-time dept.

Slimbob writes "About 2 years ago an Ariane 5 rocket malfunctioned and left a very expensive Artemis satellite in an unusable orbit. Well, over the course of 18 months, the European Space Agency actually managed to push the satellite into a usable orbit using measly 15mN ion thrusters! They managed the feat by reprogramming about 20% of the original control software and uplinking the patches to the satellite! See the ESA press release . Achievements include the first first major reprogramming of a telecommunications satellite, the first orbital transfer to geostationary orbit using ion propulsion, and the longest ever operational drift orbit."

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"15mN ion thrusters" by rthille · 2003-02-19 06:26 · Score: 3, Funny

15mN ion thrusters
See honey, size doesn't matter!

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1. Re:"15mN ion thrusters" by MrPeach · 2003-02-19 07:09 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  It's not the size of the thrusters, it's the length of it's operation!
Wow by robbo · 2003-02-19 08:03 · Score: 3, Funny

Imagine trying to do that to a windows box. With each patch you'd have to engineer a probe to go up and hit 'Ok' when it reminds you to reboot. ;-)

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