How Spacecraft Fly
  • Home
  • About the author
  • What's it all about?
  • Reviews
  • Picture gallery
  • External links
  • Contact me
  • Author's blog
  • Correction to text

European Space Agency flagship mission in danger

4/21/2012

3 Comments

 
Picture
The ENVISAT 1 spacecraft, flagship of ESA's Earth observation programme, has recently fallen silent raising fears that the 8 tonne satellite has suffered a critical anomaly.   Personnel at ESA's operations centre at Darmstadt in Germany have been struggling over the last week or so to regain contact with the stricken spacecraft.  The operations team are particularly concerned that there is no confirmation that the vehicle has entered 'safe mode', which maintains the system's power by autonomously aligning the solar array optimally to the Sun.
To discover whether the satellite has suffered significant damage, mainly from impact with space junk, ESA requested the French national space agency CNES to task its Pleiades system (see gallery) to image ENVISAT from orbit.  The Pleiades system orbits around 70 km below the ENVISAT orbital altitude. The outcome of exercise is shown above (see gallery for enlaged version).  This remarkable image, taken from a range of 100 km, shows the spacecraft to be intact, with no significant discernable damage.
The mystery continues ...

3 Comments
long island ad agencies link
5/30/2012 10:54:54 pm

An appreciated article! Thanks for your posting. I really like when reading your article. It attracts me so much. Please post this blog more to share your ideas with readers. I am sure that most of readers will visit your site.

Reply
Graham Swinerd link
6/2/2012 02:34:24 am

Thanks for your encouraging words - I don't post that often as I generally do not get a response. On the matter of Envisat, unfortunately the spacecraft has now been declared 'lost'. Best wishes - Graham

Reply
BDSM San Jose link
10/15/2013 04:32:23 pm

Was browsing Google and found your site, enjoyed the reading, thanks

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Graham Swinerd - I hope to use this page to highlight current major events in space and spacececraft.

    Archives

    November 2022
    October 2016
    July 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    July 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    December 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    January 2012
    October 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.