Correcting software at the last minute preserves the planetary probe before the critical Venus Flyby

The investigation between heavy planets is exceptionally on an eight -year trip to Jupiter, using the danger of the Earth and the flower to push it on its way towards the giant of the gas. Just weeks before Flyby in Venus, the mission of European space juice was silent, which increased its ability to perform the planetary meeting.

Unable to communicate with the spacecraft, teams of engineers managed to know the problem under a narrow timetable, in the hope that their efforts will reach juice because it is heading to millions of miles.

Juice, or Jupiter Ice Ice ExplorerOn his way to Venus to perform the gravitational aid maneuver on August 31, following the solution to the weakened software imbalance. Mission Control managed to re -communicate with the spacecraft in a timely manner to prepare it for the upcoming Flyby, which leads to an impressive recovery of the task while heading towards its goal.

Don’t wait for an option

The team discovered the anomalies on July 16, when the juice was flying over a ground station in Sipros, Spain. ESA’s deep space antenna was unable to establish a communication with the spacecraft, which raised fears that the juice was in a damaged survival mode caused by multiple failure on the plane.

Angela Dietz, director of the juice spacecraft operations, said in A. statement. “With no remote measurement, it is difficult to diagnose and solve the root cause.”

The spacecraft will be automatically reset in 14 days, but the team could not wait for this long and risks in the face of the juice scheduled with Venus. “Waiting was not an option. We had to act quickly.” Dietz added. “The wait for two weeks for re -setting meant delaying the important preparations for Venus Venus.”

Instead, the engineers’ team began the mission to send orders blind to the supposed site of Juice. This has proven to be a challenge, as the spacecraft is currently 124 million miles (200 million km) on the other side of the sun. Each rescue signal will take 11 minutes to reach the spacecraft, and the team will then have to wait another 11 minutes to listen to the juice.

Dult software timing error

After about 20 hours, the driving signal finally reached the spacecraft, which led to a response. Fortunately, the team found juice in good condition, and no system failure was discovered.

As it turned out, the software timing error causes the Juice signal to become very weak to discover it from the ground. JUICE contains built -in software that replaces the signal amplifier and turns off with an internal temporary. The timer is returned from scratch once every 16 months, but if the program uses the time at the same moment when it is restarted, then the signal is closed, and the juice calls are made to the ground.

The team was able to solve the problem and is now developing ways to ensure the JUICE signal is always across the distant space. “We have identified a number of possible ways to ensure that this does not happen again, and we now decide the solution that will be the best to implement,” said Dietz.

juice It was launched on April 14, 2023A group of remote sensing, geophysical, bears the site to explore Jupiter and its three ocean-bearing moons, Callisto and Europa. The spacecraft, which has an area of ​​13227 rugs (6000 kg), is expected to reach the giant gas system in 2031, using a series of gravity that helps to capture the speed. Venus Flyby this week is the second of four planned gravitational aid maneuvers.

The juice will also use the ground to reach the required transport speed through the upcoming Flyby in September 2026 and its last planned in January 2029.