Kepler Recovered from Emergency and Stable (nasa.gov)
Here's an exciting update on NASA's Kepler, which entered "emergency mode" last week. An anonymous reader points us to a press release on NASA's official website: Mission operations engineers have successfully recovered the Kepler spacecraft from Emergency Mode (EM). On Sunday morning, the spacecraft reached a stable state with the communication antenna pointed toward Earth, enabling telemetry and historical event data to be downloaded to the ground. The spacecraft is operating in its lowest fuel-burn mode. The mission has cancelled the spacecraft emergency, returning the Deep Space Network ground communications to normal scheduling. Once data is on the ground, the team will thoroughly assess all on board systems to ensure the spacecraft is healthy enough to return to science mode and begin the K2 mission's microlensing observing campaign, called Campaign 9. This checkout is anticipated to continue through the week. Earth-based observatories participating in Campaign 9 will continue to make observations as Kepler's health check continues. The K2 observing opportunity for Campaign 9 will end on July 1, when the galactic center is no longer in view from the vantage point of the spacecraft.
www.gig15.com
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charles webster baer
president , founder and owner of global internet government .www.gig15.com
tianjin china
charlesbaer@outlook.com
There is tons of missing information in the summary: what are the races and genders of the people involved? Without this information how can we form an opinion about this? I propose for the new "SJW" Slashdot we require that complete (cis)gender and race information about all participants of stories be released.
being advertised on /.? This just helps those wealthy republican corporations.
Lookup the politicians that were most for Kepler, label them by party and count them. Then lambast the party with the most.
Quite entertaining.
Given all the troubles the Kepler craft has encountered, I just want to raise a toast to the geeks in charge of this project. They have overcome some incredible obstacles through ingenuity and determination, and yet again they have brought the bird back under some semblance of control... from seventy-five million miles away. Now THAT is a hack.
To quote Wayne & Garth: We're not worthy.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Wow. That's Outstanding work (at those distances and times required for communication). These truly are some steely eyed missile men.
They should not need any fuel except for putting it on it's correct course.
When it comes to Yaw, Pitch, Roll, all of that should be done with an on board electric gyroscope.
Wait, what is important here is are the engineers' shirts are ideologically correct?!
What OS is this craft using?
Is there a standard OS NASA uses on all it's space born computers? Or, is everything written from scratch?
Anyone know where you can read about the code, or even read the code?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Both Luna (4.4) and Mars (4.5) have been out for a while, expecting stable Neon (4.6) soon. Remember to keep that software up to date...
Incoming message from Kepler: "Wow, that was amazing! I need a smoke."
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Recovered? I thought he died in 1630.
You are welcome on my lawn.
User Statistical at Ars Technica explained it nicely:
Normally Kepler (in K2 mode) uses the pressure from sunlight combined with the two remaining reaction wheels to maintain orientation. It still does need periodic thruster usage but the heavy lifting is done by solar pressure and reaction wheels which makes the propellent usage very efficient. However it is a complicated and precarious balancing act. It needs full instrumentation, computer operation, and periodic updates from Earth to work.
When it goes into emergency mode it falls back on 100% station keeping thrusters because that is simpler although far more expensive in terms of fuel. They don't know exactly why it went into emergency mode but for whatever reason Kepler believed it could not maintain orientation without it.
In emergency mode it has to expand propellent because without some station keeping it would begin to tumble uncontrollably. If you have a spacecraft millions of kms away from Earth, tumbling out of control with its communication array no longer pointed at Earth you will probably never regain control. So it is a last ditch effort to maintain proper orientation on the hope that command & control update can fix the problem. It begins "looking" for an command & control signal from Earth (using propellent to orient the spacecraft). If/when it finds it, it then tries to keep that orientation using 100% station keeping thrusters regardless of fuel consumption. It will continue to do so until standard operation is restored or it runs out of fuel.
About Kepler's K2 mode:
Kepler's Second Light: How K2 Will Work | NASA
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
I wished it would crash on Earth on some orphanage and killed a lot of children and shit.
Plan 9!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Ask yourself why an antenna won't deploy on a deep space probe. Or ask how they can launch a six billion dollar telescope without testing it's mirror."
From the movie, "The Arrival".
I always think about that scene when something goes wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.