Almost lost, but saved spacecraft
Even the systems of artificial intelligence, which have been intensively developed in recent years, have not yet grown to be able to drive at least a car on Earth. Therefore, for six decades of the existence of cosmonautics, probes and ships without a man on board have always been controlled remotely. Some operations are performed by automatics on board, but communication failure and loss of control mean millions and billions in damage.
But sometimes a miracle happens, and the device again begins to obey the commands of operators on Earth. On January 20, 2018, amateur astronomer from Canada, Scott Tilly, recorded a satellite signal in near-earth orbit and suggested that this could be an IMAGE that was lost by NASA in 2005. NASA confirmed this guess . We decided to recall a few more stories about stations, vehicles, observatories that were broken or lost in space, but were saved.
In 1985, one of the brightest stories related to the rescue of spacecraft occurred. Soviet cosmonauts Vladimir Dzhanibekov and Viktor Savinykh repaired the Salyut-7 orbital station , the predecessor of the Mir station.
In February 1985, the connection with the station was interrupted. At that time, the expedition to it was not made within six months, so there was no one on board. The power system sensor has failed and the batteries are low. The problem was aggravated by the breakdown of the command radio line. Western tabloids savored the fall of the Salyut-7: Tokyo, Berlin, Washington. Indeed, an uncontrolled object can fall anywhere, as was the case with the US space station Skylab: “The President says. It seems, the orbital station has fallen on your farm ”-“ Aha, now gobies will see ” . The lifeless station could either be recognized as lost or send an expedition for salvation. We went on the second, time-consuming and dangerous option for the lives of astronauts.
The Soyuz T-13 ship was re-equipped, an automatic approach system and a laser rangefinder were added, and additional fuel and provisions were loaded. Janibekov flew into space for the fifth time. He was the crew commander and was responsible for the manual docking with the unmanaged station. The astronauts managed to deploy the panels to the Sun, charge the batteries, turn on the power systems, and then get rid of the water resulting from melted hoarfrost, using almost all the rags at the station, including flight suits. According to this incident, the film “Salute-7” was shot, which the heroes of the story did not really like. Their names in the film have changed.
The station, which seemingly was lost in 1985, met several more space expeditions and was destroyed only in 1991, falling on the territory of sparsely populated areas of Chile and Argentina.
The SOHO space observatory, a joint project of NASA and ESA, has been helping to observe the stars and planets around the Sun and the Sun itself for more than twenty years, being between the Earth and our star. SOHO was launched into space on December 2, 1995.
An artificial eclipse is created on board the observatory using the LASCO tool, which consists of three coronagraphs. A coronograph is a telescope, in the center of the field of view of which there is a disk blocking the light of the Sun, an “artificial moon”. Every 12 minutes LASCO takes pictures that are available to us with a very high for 1995 resolution of 1024x1024. Also on board are instruments for observing the sun.
In June 1998, the SOHO Observatory began to perform the tasks of an expanded mission, but the “catastrophic sequence of events”, as the project supervisory board called it, led to the loss of the ship’s track after the standard gyro calibration procedure. The observatory could not control its position and direct the solar panels in the right direction to replenish the battery charge. During the month, the stations sent signals and waited for an answer, but in July of the same year they found it using the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Puerto Rico and found out that the station rotates at a speed of 53 seconds.
Fortunately, over time, the position of the space observatory relative to the Sun changed, and on August 3, 1998, it responded to a request from Earth, receiving enough energy. Specialists were able to defrost hydrazine and charge the batteries, and by September SOHO was looking in the right direction. Two of the three gyroscopes were inoperable, but the rest of the instruments turned out to continue to work.
By December 1998, the station had lost the last gyro. In order not to write off the station, experts reworked the software: SOHO was able to determine its position using other tools. This allowed to reduce fuel consumption and allowed the station to continue work. Instead of the planned 2 years SOHO flies 23 years.
Although the telescope for more than a quarter of a century has been regularly supplying colorful images for social networks and the NASA site, at some point its existence was threatened.
In 1923, the idea of an orbital telescope first appeared in literature in the book of German engineer and scientist Hermann Obert . In 1946, American scientist Lyman Spitzer publishes the article Astronomical Advantages of an Extraterrestrial Observatory, in which he describes the main advantages of such a telescope - it can work in the IR and UV ranges without the influence of the earth's atmosphere and its angular resolution will be limited by diffraction rather than turbulent flows in the atmosphere . In 1965, Spitzer headed the committee that was to define the scientific tasks for the telescope. Funding for the project was approved by the US Congress in 1978, and in the 1980s it received the name Hubble, in honor of the American astronomer and cosmologist Edwin Hubble .
The launch was scheduled for 1983, later it was postponed several times, first due to the contractor not having time to complete the work, then because of the Challenger disaster, which froze the Space Shuttle for several years. The launch took place on April 24, 1990. Discovery brought the telescope to the calculated orbit. Soon it turned out that the main mirror had a defect - only 2 microns of deviations from a given surface shape jeopardized the operation of the telescope. He could observe only very dull objects and gave a strong blur in the pictures. Therefore, already at the end of 1993, the first expedition took place, within which the astronauts installed the COSTAR spherical aberration correction system through a telescope.
Galaxy M100: before and after installing COSTAR. A source
In 2004, after four telescope repair missions and fourteen years of its work in orbit, NASA announced that they would create a robot to service the telescope, and that the cost of the mission would be about a billion dollars. A few months later, NASA reversed its decision and budgeted for the telescope to be withdrawn from orbit and flooded. "Hubble is dying." We decided that the risks associated with its maintenance do not justify the continuation of the mission, ” said the agency. But in 2006, the preparation for the last mission to repair and update Hubble began.
On May 11, 2009, the fifth expedition to the telescope was launched. The astronauts replaced all the gyroscopes, installed new batteries and a data formatter, repaired thermal insulation, restored the performance of the survey camera, and installed new equipment. The telescope, which was planned to be flooded in 2005, is still in use , and will only come down from orbit as planned after 2030.
Repairing a spacecraft launched into space is an extremely difficult task, especially when it comes not to near-earth orbit, but to other planets or the other end of the solar system. But breakdowns occur frequently, which is why specialists have to look for ways to repair from the Earth.
In 2001, the Mars Odyssey orbital satellite was launched from the Earth towards Mars. His goal was to study the planet, he was equipped with equipment to search for water . The HEND neutron detector together with the GRS gamma detector confirmed the presence of hydrogen atoms and allowed us to make the first distribution maps of water ice under the surface of Mars. Also, the unit is responsible for other important tasks: it relayed a signal from the Earth to the rover Spirit , and now it helps to communicate with Opportunity and Curiosity .
In 2012, the device had problems with one of the three gyroscopes. Breakdown of the equipment responsible for the orientation of the spacecraft can lead to excessive fuel consumption and the inability to charge the batteries, directing the solar panels in the right direction. NASA specialists had to transfer the satellite to safe mode.
Five months after the conservation, the specialists managed to diagnose, the satellite contacted and helped to get another portion of the photo from Opportunity. Mars Odyssey, named after the Space Odyssey 2001, has a fuel supply for operation until the mid-2020s.
Between 1965 and 1976, with the support of the United States Air Force, the Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a series of LES satellite - Lincoln Experimental Sattelite . The satellites were experimental, and many errors were made in the process of their launch into orbit. The first of a series of satellites was lost in 1967 and the next 50 years was considered space debris.
In 2013, a UK amateur radio amateur Phil Williams G3YPQ detected a signal coming in at 4-second intervals. With this speed rotates LES1. The satellite batteries did not work, but through them, apparently, the electric charge went freely to the 237 MHz transmitter, which allowed the satellite to send signals while receiving energy from sunlight.
It took NASA three years to confirm the assumption of the radio amateur. It was actually a satellite lost several decades ago, which, due to an error in calculations at launch, could not reach the desired orbit. Control of the satellite cannot be established, but at least it is alive, it sends signals and continues to rotate around the Earth half a century after the launch.
The STEREO observatory, consisting of the STEREO-A and STEREO-B devices, was supposed to help observe the sun. It was assumed that they would take photographs of the Sun from different sides to obtain stereo images. If A continues to work and sends photographs to Earth, then the stereo images from NASA specialists at a certain moment ceased to be obtained - there were problems with STEREO-B.
Devices launched in October 2006. Their mission was to last two years, but, as is often the case, they continued to work after the expiration of this period. The connection with each of the devices was periodically interrupted for three months, since the Sun was between them and the Earth.
STEREO probes were programmed to automatically restart communication systems every 72 hours if they do not receive commands from the Earth. During the testing of the functionality of this function, STEREO-B on October 1, 2014 did not contact. Engineers for a weak signal found that the module Inertial Measurement Unit, which determines the speed of rotation, gave out incorrect information, because of which the device could not aim the antenna at Earth.
On August 21, 2016, using the Deep Space Network (DSN) international radio telescope network, NASA specialists were able to communicate with the lost satellite and clarify its coordinates. In 2018, the Earth itself will catch up with the probe, which will allow specialists to contact it at close range. or deliver "home".
In 2004, the Rosetta station with the Phiile descent vehicle was launched into space in order to explore the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko . The path took 10 years, and in 2014, the spacecraft for the first time in the history of mankind sat relatively softly on a comet.
Besides the fact that the comet moves at a speed of more than ten kilometers per second, there was a difficulty with gravity — on the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko it is eight thousand times weaker than the earth one. The probe was equipped with harpoons and a thruster, which was supposed to reduce the force of rebound during landing and help the probe to gain a foothold on the surface.
On November 12, 2014, a probe was landed, but he tried to sit down at a different location, not at the planned location. The harpoons did not work, Philae rebounded twice and was stuck in the rocks, where most of the time remained in the shadows. He discovered organic molecules in the gases emitted by the comet, sent the first pictures and went into sleep mode due to a lack of battery power and the inability to replenish it.
After 211 days in the hibernation mode, the Philae probe woke up and sent data to Earth, including information on the condition of the equipment — it received no damage. But by the end of 2015, the temperature in the crack became incompatible with the performance of the probe.
On September 5, 2016, thanks to photographs from the Rosetta station taken from a distance of 2.7 kilometers, experts were able to find Philae on the comet's surface. But the connection with the sirloin can no longer be established.
The developers of spacecraft are trying to duplicate all the systems, think over the possibility of using the tools not only for their direct purposes. Accidents happen rarely, but when they do arise, specialists face the difficult task of repairing vehicles. Most often - the remote, but sometimes people have to become heroes and go into orbit to perform dangerous tasks. Incidents rarely occur, the loss of devices - even more rarely, the cases when it was possible to revive the already lost probe - units.
But sometimes a miracle happens, and the device again begins to obey the commands of operators on Earth. On January 20, 2018, amateur astronomer from Canada, Scott Tilly, recorded a satellite signal in near-earth orbit and suggested that this could be an IMAGE that was lost by NASA in 2005. NASA confirmed this guess . We decided to recall a few more stories about stations, vehicles, observatories that were broken or lost in space, but were saved.
Salyut-7
In 1985, one of the brightest stories related to the rescue of spacecraft occurred. Soviet cosmonauts Vladimir Dzhanibekov and Viktor Savinykh repaired the Salyut-7 orbital station , the predecessor of the Mir station.
In February 1985, the connection with the station was interrupted. At that time, the expedition to it was not made within six months, so there was no one on board. The power system sensor has failed and the batteries are low. The problem was aggravated by the breakdown of the command radio line. Western tabloids savored the fall of the Salyut-7: Tokyo, Berlin, Washington. Indeed, an uncontrolled object can fall anywhere, as was the case with the US space station Skylab: “The President says. It seems, the orbital station has fallen on your farm ”-“ Aha, now gobies will see ” . The lifeless station could either be recognized as lost or send an expedition for salvation. We went on the second, time-consuming and dangerous option for the lives of astronauts.
The Soyuz T-13 ship was re-equipped, an automatic approach system and a laser rangefinder were added, and additional fuel and provisions were loaded. Janibekov flew into space for the fifth time. He was the crew commander and was responsible for the manual docking with the unmanaged station. The astronauts managed to deploy the panels to the Sun, charge the batteries, turn on the power systems, and then get rid of the water resulting from melted hoarfrost, using almost all the rags at the station, including flight suits. According to this incident, the film “Salute-7” was shot, which the heroes of the story did not really like. Their names in the film have changed.
The station, which seemingly was lost in 1985, met several more space expeditions and was destroyed only in 1991, falling on the territory of sparsely populated areas of Chile and Argentina.
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)
The SOHO space observatory, a joint project of NASA and ESA, has been helping to observe the stars and planets around the Sun and the Sun itself for more than twenty years, being between the Earth and our star. SOHO was launched into space on December 2, 1995.
An artificial eclipse is created on board the observatory using the LASCO tool, which consists of three coronagraphs. A coronograph is a telescope, in the center of the field of view of which there is a disk blocking the light of the Sun, an “artificial moon”. Every 12 minutes LASCO takes pictures that are available to us with a very high for 1995 resolution of 1024x1024. Also on board are instruments for observing the sun.
In June 1998, the SOHO Observatory began to perform the tasks of an expanded mission, but the “catastrophic sequence of events”, as the project supervisory board called it, led to the loss of the ship’s track after the standard gyro calibration procedure. The observatory could not control its position and direct the solar panels in the right direction to replenish the battery charge. During the month, the stations sent signals and waited for an answer, but in July of the same year they found it using the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Puerto Rico and found out that the station rotates at a speed of 53 seconds.
Fortunately, over time, the position of the space observatory relative to the Sun changed, and on August 3, 1998, it responded to a request from Earth, receiving enough energy. Specialists were able to defrost hydrazine and charge the batteries, and by September SOHO was looking in the right direction. Two of the three gyroscopes were inoperable, but the rest of the instruments turned out to continue to work.
By December 1998, the station had lost the last gyro. In order not to write off the station, experts reworked the software: SOHO was able to determine its position using other tools. This allowed to reduce fuel consumption and allowed the station to continue work. Instead of the planned 2 years SOHO flies 23 years.
Hubble Orbital Telescope
Although the telescope for more than a quarter of a century has been regularly supplying colorful images for social networks and the NASA site, at some point its existence was threatened.
In 1923, the idea of an orbital telescope first appeared in literature in the book of German engineer and scientist Hermann Obert . In 1946, American scientist Lyman Spitzer publishes the article Astronomical Advantages of an Extraterrestrial Observatory, in which he describes the main advantages of such a telescope - it can work in the IR and UV ranges without the influence of the earth's atmosphere and its angular resolution will be limited by diffraction rather than turbulent flows in the atmosphere . In 1965, Spitzer headed the committee that was to define the scientific tasks for the telescope. Funding for the project was approved by the US Congress in 1978, and in the 1980s it received the name Hubble, in honor of the American astronomer and cosmologist Edwin Hubble .
The launch was scheduled for 1983, later it was postponed several times, first due to the contractor not having time to complete the work, then because of the Challenger disaster, which froze the Space Shuttle for several years. The launch took place on April 24, 1990. Discovery brought the telescope to the calculated orbit. Soon it turned out that the main mirror had a defect - only 2 microns of deviations from a given surface shape jeopardized the operation of the telescope. He could observe only very dull objects and gave a strong blur in the pictures. Therefore, already at the end of 1993, the first expedition took place, within which the astronauts installed the COSTAR spherical aberration correction system through a telescope.
Galaxy M100: before and after installing COSTAR. A source
In 2004, after four telescope repair missions and fourteen years of its work in orbit, NASA announced that they would create a robot to service the telescope, and that the cost of the mission would be about a billion dollars. A few months later, NASA reversed its decision and budgeted for the telescope to be withdrawn from orbit and flooded. "Hubble is dying." We decided that the risks associated with its maintenance do not justify the continuation of the mission, ” said the agency. But in 2006, the preparation for the last mission to repair and update Hubble began.
On May 11, 2009, the fifth expedition to the telescope was launched. The astronauts replaced all the gyroscopes, installed new batteries and a data formatter, repaired thermal insulation, restored the performance of the survey camera, and installed new equipment. The telescope, which was planned to be flooded in 2005, is still in use , and will only come down from orbit as planned after 2030.
Mars odyssey
Repairing a spacecraft launched into space is an extremely difficult task, especially when it comes not to near-earth orbit, but to other planets or the other end of the solar system. But breakdowns occur frequently, which is why specialists have to look for ways to repair from the Earth.
In 2001, the Mars Odyssey orbital satellite was launched from the Earth towards Mars. His goal was to study the planet, he was equipped with equipment to search for water . The HEND neutron detector together with the GRS gamma detector confirmed the presence of hydrogen atoms and allowed us to make the first distribution maps of water ice under the surface of Mars. Also, the unit is responsible for other important tasks: it relayed a signal from the Earth to the rover Spirit , and now it helps to communicate with Opportunity and Curiosity .
In 2012, the device had problems with one of the three gyroscopes. Breakdown of the equipment responsible for the orientation of the spacecraft can lead to excessive fuel consumption and the inability to charge the batteries, directing the solar panels in the right direction. NASA specialists had to transfer the satellite to safe mode.
Five months after the conservation, the specialists managed to diagnose, the satellite contacted and helped to get another portion of the photo from Opportunity. Mars Odyssey, named after the Space Odyssey 2001, has a fuel supply for operation until the mid-2020s.
LES1 in Earth orbit
Between 1965 and 1976, with the support of the United States Air Force, the Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a series of LES satellite - Lincoln Experimental Sattelite . The satellites were experimental, and many errors were made in the process of their launch into orbit. The first of a series of satellites was lost in 1967 and the next 50 years was considered space debris.
In 2013, a UK amateur radio amateur Phil Williams G3YPQ detected a signal coming in at 4-second intervals. With this speed rotates LES1. The satellite batteries did not work, but through them, apparently, the electric charge went freely to the 237 MHz transmitter, which allowed the satellite to send signals while receiving energy from sunlight.
It took NASA three years to confirm the assumption of the radio amateur. It was actually a satellite lost several decades ago, which, due to an error in calculations at launch, could not reach the desired orbit. Control of the satellite cannot be established, but at least it is alive, it sends signals and continues to rotate around the Earth half a century after the launch.
STEREO-B
The STEREO observatory, consisting of the STEREO-A and STEREO-B devices, was supposed to help observe the sun. It was assumed that they would take photographs of the Sun from different sides to obtain stereo images. If A continues to work and sends photographs to Earth, then the stereo images from NASA specialists at a certain moment ceased to be obtained - there were problems with STEREO-B.
Devices launched in October 2006. Their mission was to last two years, but, as is often the case, they continued to work after the expiration of this period. The connection with each of the devices was periodically interrupted for three months, since the Sun was between them and the Earth.
STEREO probes were programmed to automatically restart communication systems every 72 hours if they do not receive commands from the Earth. During the testing of the functionality of this function, STEREO-B on October 1, 2014 did not contact. Engineers for a weak signal found that the module Inertial Measurement Unit, which determines the speed of rotation, gave out incorrect information, because of which the device could not aim the antenna at Earth.
On August 21, 2016, using the Deep Space Network (DSN) international radio telescope network, NASA specialists were able to communicate with the lost satellite and clarify its coordinates. In 2018, the Earth itself will catch up with the probe, which will allow specialists to contact it at close range. or deliver "home".
Philae on the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko
In 2004, the Rosetta station with the Phiile descent vehicle was launched into space in order to explore the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko . The path took 10 years, and in 2014, the spacecraft for the first time in the history of mankind sat relatively softly on a comet.
Besides the fact that the comet moves at a speed of more than ten kilometers per second, there was a difficulty with gravity — on the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko it is eight thousand times weaker than the earth one. The probe was equipped with harpoons and a thruster, which was supposed to reduce the force of rebound during landing and help the probe to gain a foothold on the surface.
On November 12, 2014, a probe was landed, but he tried to sit down at a different location, not at the planned location. The harpoons did not work, Philae rebounded twice and was stuck in the rocks, where most of the time remained in the shadows. He discovered organic molecules in the gases emitted by the comet, sent the first pictures and went into sleep mode due to a lack of battery power and the inability to replenish it.
After 211 days in the hibernation mode, the Philae probe woke up and sent data to Earth, including information on the condition of the equipment — it received no damage. But by the end of 2015, the temperature in the crack became incompatible with the performance of the probe.
On September 5, 2016, thanks to photographs from the Rosetta station taken from a distance of 2.7 kilometers, experts were able to find Philae on the comet's surface. But the connection with the sirloin can no longer be established.
The developers of spacecraft are trying to duplicate all the systems, think over the possibility of using the tools not only for their direct purposes. Accidents happen rarely, but when they do arise, specialists face the difficult task of repairing vehicles. Most often - the remote, but sometimes people have to become heroes and go into orbit to perform dangerous tasks. Incidents rarely occur, the loss of devices - even more rarely, the cases when it was possible to revive the already lost probe - units.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/409883/