NASA almost lost its Maven spacecraft. The Mars focused spacecraft has been orbiting the red planet since 2014. However, NASA said it had recently encountered some problems with the orbiter. These problems first appeared in February, when the spacecraft team found that it had suddenly entered safe mode.
Fortunately, engineers can solve this problem. But NASA said it had been a painful three months.
As early as February this year, after a three hour speech aimed at extending Maven's mission, Shannon curry, the chief investigator of the spacecraft, received a call saying that it had entered the safe mode.
According to a statement, the spacecraft encountered problems with its inertial measurement unit (IMU). This causes it to enter a safe mode, which occurs when the spacecraft encounters problems.
"This is a key challenge for the mission," curry said in a statement. The team pointed out that the spacecraft encountered problems after the routine power cycle of imu-1. There are two identical Imus on Maven: imu-1 is the primary unit and imu-2 is the backup unit. After the power cycle, the team was unable to contact the spacecraft.
However, after resuming contact, they found that Maven could not know its current posture from any IMU. Because these systems are navigation tools for Maven orbit, the team cannot accurately know the position of the spacecraft at any specific point in time.
Even after the restart, the spacecraft's computer cannot determine its direction. Therefore, it had to switch to the backup computer to get an accurate reading of its location. At this point it enters safe mode and stops all other activities.
On the ground, the engineering team quickly started working to try to find a solution. Since Maven's IMU has been degraded, they have been designing an all star model for Maven. Once implemented, it will allow spacecraft to navigate through stars without using IMU. As the team plans to implement it in october2022, it is not fully ready for launch.
The spacecraft has been flying in the air for much longer than NASA originally planned. However, given that Maven has returned some great information about Mars to the team on earth, keeping it running has become a priority for the team. This is why they have worked so hard to bring the all star model forward than expected.
Although it took about three months, Maven was finally launched and started running again, which means that the spacecraft can continue to learn more about Mars and its atmosphere.