NASA Re-establishes Contact With Wayward Satellite

NASA Re-establishes Contact With Wayward Satellite

WASHINGTON (July 27, 1998 5:16 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - U.S. astronomers have found the lost SOHO satellite, sent up by a joint U.S.-European mission to study the sun, after radio contact was interrupted by a programming error, NASA said Monday.

Two radio telescopes detected SOHO as it rotated slowly near its original position in space, approximately 1 million miles from Earth, NASA added.

Engineers were able to calculate the exact location of the vessel when NASA's Deep Space Network in Goldstone, Calif., intercepted the echo of a radio signal transmitted by the giant radio telescope of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center (NAIC) in Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

Radio contact with SOHO was interrupted on June 24 due to a programming error on the ground which led its solar panels to switch positions. Deprived of solar energy, the satellite stopped responding to orders from Earth.

Those in charge of the mission, led by NASA and the European Space Agency ( ESA), have begun studying the data collected by the two radio telescopes in an attempt to re-establish contact with the spacecraft.

SOHO is apparently slowly rotating on its axis, which suggests that it suffered only minor damage and, most importantly, that its solar panels will soon face the sun again. NASA expects to re-establish contact as soon as the probe's batteries are recharged in the coming weeks.

Designed by ESA, the SOHO satellite was launched on December 2, 1995, by the American rocket Atlas II and is piloted from NASA's Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, Md.

On June 4, the probe recorded an extremely rare phenomenon -- the dive of two comets into the Sun's atmosphere. On May 27, it registered for the first time a solar quake of incredible magnitude.