嘉中校友全聯會: 失蹤的太空船

2016年8月30日星期二

失蹤的太空船

Dave Mosher,Business Insider Mon, Aug 22 2:20 PM PDT

08/30/2016

Somewhere on the other side of the sun, almost directly opposite to Earth, a 9-year-old NASA spacecraft has drifted aimlessly through the void, unable to establish contact with our planet, since Oct. 1, 2014.在太陽另一邊，地球正對面，九年新的太空船，自2014年10月1日起，即與地球失去聯絡，漫無目的地漂浮。

At least that was the depressing situation until Sunday night.至少迄周日晚上，那是令人擔憂的情況。

In a statement posted Monday (scroll down for the full version), the space agency says it has finally contacted the STEREO-B solar observatory — an identical twin of another sun-monitoring robot, called STEREO-A — after nearly 2 years of effort.

The spacecraft was about 189 million miles from Earth when NASA finally recontacted it: 當太空總署終於再聯絡上它時，它離地球约一億八仟九佰萬哩

Each STEREO spacecraft launched in 2006 and began circling the sun in slightly different yet Earth-like orbits. 2016年發射的stereo太陽觀測站太空船，以與地球稍微不同的軌道環繞太

That way, scientists could watch our backyard star (and its angry eruptions) from all angles. This also allowed NASA to get amazing 3D views of solar flares, coronal mass ejections, huge loops of plasma, and other solar activity.

Though the $550 million mission was supposed to wrap up in 2008, it was a big success and NASA kept it going.

Here’s the full statement from Karen C. Fox, a NASA spokesperson:

“On Aug. 21, 2016, contact was reestablished with one of NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatories, known as the STEREO-B spacecraft, after communications were lost on Oct. 1, 2014. Over 22 months, the STEREO team has worked to attempt contact with the spacecraft. Most recently, they have attempted a monthly recovery operation using NASA’s Deep Space Network, or DSN, which tracks and communicates with missions throughout space.