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Space Science

SOHO's Antenna Jammed 56

Posted by michael from the really-long-stick-needed dept.
zapp writes "Space.com has a story reporting that the communications antenna on SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) has been acting up for two weeks, and as of 3PM ET Thursday was not functioning properly. The problem appears to be with motor to position the antenna. If full use of SOHO cannot be regained, it will set space weather forcasting back 20 years."
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SOHO's Antenna Jammed More

SOHO's Antenna Jammed

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  • So there are atmospheric conditions in outer space, just like they said in the movie, Plan 9 From Outer Space. Maybe the aliens don't want us to know.

  • Um, yeah. (Score:3, Funny)

    by jpsst34 ( 582349 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:50AM (#6254425) Journal
    If full use of SOHO cannot be regained, it will set space weather forcasting back 20 years.

    You mean it will take us to a time when the forcasts aren't accurate, and they change at the last minute to relect what it's really going to do? Man, that would be terrible! Oh, wait...

  • Space weather...as in solar winds (Score:5, Informative)

    by thelexx ( 237096 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:54AM (#6254473)
    This has nothing to do with terrestrial weather prediction.

    FTA:

    "SOHO monitors ejections of solar energy and in many cases provides the only warning of magnetic storms that are about to hit Earth. Though usually benign, these storms can knock out satellites and disrupt satellite and radio communications. In at least one case a solar storm disabled a power grid."

    • What do you do, move the Earth out of the way? Put your tinfoil hat on? Why bother forecasting the Sun's weather, not much you can do..

      • Re:And how does forecasting help? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by mlyle ( 148697 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @02:17AM (#6265809)
        Lots of things. You can have employees ready to bring services back up after any damage occurs, for one. Also, some satellites could be configured into safe modes that prevent damage-- a significant consideration when even small satellite launches usually cost in excess of $50M. Also, the solar wind is potentially hazardous to humans (especially outside the Van Allen belts. Forecasting the solar wind could improve the safety of future Mars and moon missions.

        Also, forecasting the Sun's weather will enable researchers to stage experiments on how the solar wind affects Earth's atmosphere to a greater extent.

      • What do you do, move the Earth out of the way? Put your tinfoil hat on? Why bother forecasting the Sun's weather, not much you can do.

        From space.com: [space.com]

        Strong storms can be deadly to spacewalking astronauts. The crew of the International Space Station, while inside, is generally not endangered, but they do have a special protective area they can go to in a severe storm.

        And, more importantly for most of us, from msnbc: [msnbc.com]

        Advance warning of impending storms allows satellite operators to reduce the risk o

  • call the Navy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BigBir3d ( 454486 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @10:54AM (#6254475) Journal
    They could just call those cadets to find out how to make a reliable antenna [usna.com].

  • Jammed? (Score:1, Funny)

    by BoBathan ( 166436 ) *
    Raspberry.

    There's only one man who would dare give me the raspberry.

    Lone Starr!!!

    --Travis
  • In other news...

    Nasa is now being sued for violating an ancient patent issued to a rogue alien group for space travel.

  • If full use of SOHO cannot be regained, it will set space weather forcasting back 20 years.

    Which, if that's anything like earth weather forcasting, won't mean very much at all.

    • magnetic storm forcasting doesn't sucks (Score:5, Informative)

      by Orne ( 144925 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @11:14AM (#6254663) Homepage
      Fortunately for us, it is nothing like [noaa.gov] earth weather forecasting.

      Magnetic storms can be very damaging to AC electric systems, and power companies go into conservative operations when storms are predicted by NOAA [noaa.gov]. The change in the earth's magnetic field (as it interacts with the solar storm) induces slight currents in the metal in the earth's crust, which can have a negative impact on high voltage transformer equipment.

  • Obvious question (Score:5, Interesting)

    by crotherm ( 160925 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @11:40AM (#6254930) Journal
    So if the ability to detect magnetic storms is so important, why in the world is there a single point of failure? I am a little disappointed that the article did not mention about who built it, and what it would take to replace it. The article makes it seem like once SOHO is gone, we are SOL.

    After a little digging I found that SOHO was built in Europe. From the web site [smsc.cnes.fr]...

    The SOHO satellite was built in Europ by an industrial consortium lead by Matra, while the scientific instruments were provided by European and American scientists and funded by their national institutions.

    • Re:Obvious question (Score:5, Informative)

      by deglr6328 ( 150198 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @05:25PM (#6258320)
      SOHO has served us well [sciencedaily.com]. That said, it's only made of metal plastic and silicon parts and after being blasted by the solar wind for so many years, it's bound to fail eventually. SOHO's replacement is called the STEREO [jhuapl.edu] mission. It will actually be 2 separate spacecraft that view the sun simultaneously, in order to acquire STEREOscopic observations of the corona and coronal mass ejections. It was sometimes difficult for SOHO to tell what direction a CME was traveling in because it had only one point of view. STEREO launches in 2005. In the meantime TRACE [lmsal.com] can do a few of the things SOHO did and while at it, do some things SOHO could never do, like take these SPECTACULAR movies [lmsal.com] and images [lmsal.com] of the corona and photosphere at very high spatial and temporal resolution.

  • SOHO's Antenna Jammed (Score:3, Funny)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @11:59AM (#6255154) Homepage Journal
    "There's only one man in the universe who would DARE give me the raspberry..."

  • Space weather forecast (Score:3, Funny)

    by Saganaga ( 167162 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @12:28PM (#6255375) Homepage
    Space Weather Forecast:

    Today: Very cold, calm.
    Tomorrow: See above
    • Space weather [noaa.gov] as of June 20, 23:57:16 UT:

      Solar wind speed 1,944,000 km/hr
      Temperature 200,000 degrees K

  • SOHO: "Dammit, where is Dorthy with that oil can?!"
  • "Space.com has a story reporting that the communications antenna on SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) has been acting up for two weeks, and as of 3PM ET Thursday was not functioning properly."

    The last thing they saw was the outline of a Winnebago...
  • If full use of SOHO cannot be regained, it will set space weather forcasting back 20 years

    SOHO was launched on December 2, 1995. does the loss of SOHO somehow destroy the previous 12 years of solar observations ??

  • The high-gain antenna, used for downloading images and data, has been acting up for two weeks and has been stuck for nearly a week

    They shouldn't have believed the ads and switched from cable! It must've been that free installation offer :)

    The craft travels on an elliptical orbit and its antenna must be moved periodically to keep it pointing Earthward.

    I wonder if multiple, non-moving antennae would have been feasible?

  • Time delay (Score:4, Funny)

    by Transcendent ( 204992 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @01:23PM (#6256024)
    If full use of SOHO cannot be regained, it will set space weather forcasting back 20 years.

    Well i supposed it would be interesting to find out the forecast for this weeks weather in 1983, but I don't see how the antenna can do that =\
  • I can't see any much more reason something like this would fail except for crappy mechanical parts. There's no atmosphere, so no little dust particles to bother it, and also a lot less gravity to fight due to distance from earth.

    Seriously, space is probably the best place to put something if you want it to last. Aside from the possibility of floating junk/debris, there's a lot less outside influences than on earth.
    • Actually, radiation can kill a spacecraft if it hasn't been properly hardened against it.

      On Earth, we're shielded from most of the cosmic and solar radiation. Not so in space.

      Even without radiation, friction will eventually get the best of any moving parts, with or without gravity and an atmosphere.
    • > There's no atmosphere, so no little dust particles to bother it,
      Any scientific data to back that up? AFAIK space is filled with dust (and stars)
      • 5 atoms per cubic centimetre is hardly dusty.

        ref : Cutnell, John D. & Johnson, Kenneth W. Physics, 3rd Edition. New York: Wiley, 1995: 441. "In certain regions of outer space the temperature is about 3 K, and there are approximately 5 x 10E6 molecules per cubic meter."
        • Ah, but when they are moving at high speed, those 5 atoms seriously pit any exposed surfaces. Not to mention the X-Rays / Gamma radiation. Space is in many ways more hostile to equipment than Earth's atmosphere.

        • 5 atoms per cubic centimetre is hardly dusty.


          That number is valid for interstellar space. The SOHO is very close to a planet with an atmosphere ... that must make some difference.

    • Re:Pure mechanical error (Score:5, Informative)

      by ColaMan ( 37550 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @11:16PM (#6259910) Journal
      There's *plenty* of reasons for it to fail!

      Can *you* design a hinged joint that is :
      - rigid enough to point constantly in one direction.
      - but flexible enough for a geared stepper motor to move?
      - able to survive large temperature extremes (at least a difference of 250 deg C on the outside of the craft)? (Remember not to use normal lubricants that will freeze solid or boil off in the vacuum of space.)
      - it costs a lot of cash to get something into orbit, so it has to be very,very light.

      Now mulitply that by however many hinged joints you need to deploy and accurately point your antenna. And that's just the hinged joints.
      You can also apply the same requirements to the stepper motors, drive electronics, feedback mechanisms and a whole lot of other stuff that likely makes up the antenna system.

      It's not that easy, and I'll bet they didn't have an unlimited budget to design it either. And the thing's been up there , pointing its antenna about the place for 10 years now.

      Sorry if this sounds like a bit of a rant, but casual comments like yours make me a little peeved ;-)
      • I was assuming that it would be using something more along the lines of a ball+socket joint with a rotator mechanism as opposed to multiple sockets.
        If the ball is held by 3 rotator wheels it should stay in place well enough, and the wheels could be turned to swivel an attached rod. Lubrication could be a problem, but in space there should be less need? Think of it as a reverse-mouse. Rather than the ball rotating the rollers, the rollers rotate the ball - which in turn has a rod (antenna) pointing out the
    • There is wear and tear in orbital space. First, you get huge temperature variations as things go in and out of shadow, which creates mechanical stresses. Then you're constantly being pelted with space junk. Yes, most of it is microscopic, but the collision velocities are huge. Finally, X-rays are constantly punching atom-sized holes in your materials, which affects semiconductors first, and other materials over time.
  • These guys seem to know how to make some *really* good antennas. Why not farm it out to one of these guys?
  • ...an astronaut from the space station will be dispatched to the satellite to beat the antenna with a wrench until it starts working again.
  • "If full use of SOHO cannot be regained, it will set space weather forcasting back 20 years."

    Well, that's fine. There are more important things.

    Like Michael posting an article that set slashdot proof reading back to grade 3.

  • Some of the Facts on SOHO and Space Weather (Score:3, Informative)

    by davedancesco ( 683942 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @02:21PM (#6276418)
    (1) SOHO has far exceeded it's 2-3 year life expectancy by about 7 years. (2) It still transmits data - just significantly slower (3) The new NOAA GOES SXI (SOLAR X-ray imager) insturment is up and running (www.sec.noaa.gov),creating images every five minutes directly at the NOAA Space Environment Center. It is the official operational X-ray imager now. (4) Space is extremely hostile to satellites (high-energy particles, spacecraft charging, meteoroid impacts, radical temperature changes, etc.) Loss of spacecraft after several years is normal. (5) The economic impact to society has been estimated to be of the order of $10 - $100 million/yr (power grids, satellite drag, disrupted radio communications, GPS inaccuracies, etc.)... and growing every year with our increasingly complex technological systems (6) Recent research had shown about 30-40% of global climate change is due to solar variability There is a lot more to Space Weather than one may guess... -Dave, SpaceWx.com

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