NASA said that the Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) last spoke to Earth on November 25. It is now just roaming around in space without the space agency's supervision.
The space agency blamed technical issues for why the three-year-old spacecraft remained silent. ICON has not before caused NASA any significant problems. Hence, NASA regrettably expects the worst.
Charged particles in Earth’s atmosphere – which make up the ionosphere – create bands of color above Earth’s surface, known as airglow. ICON, depicted in this artist’s concept, will study the ionosphere from a height of about 350 miles to understand how the combined effects of terrestrial weather and space weather influence this ionized layer of particles.
NASA ICON Mission Out of Contact
The NASA satellite that studies the Earth's atmosphere recently lost touch for almost two weeks.
"The team is currently still working to establish a connection," NASA officials said in statement.
ICON's technology uses a "command loss timer" that restarts its own system if it goes silent for eight days. But when the experts completed ICON's power cycle last Dec. 5, the spacecraft kept quiet.
The mission team, NASA said, is still checking the potential cause of the incident. NASA added there might be issues with the wireless communications system.
The blog post said it is still unknown whether the spacecraft will still call home again. According to NASA, the team is currently unable to determine the spacecraft's health, and the lack of a downlink signal could indicate a system failure.
The agency asked the Department of Defense's Space Surveillance Network to see the spacecraft. Luckily, it's still alive and intact. But communication still matters for NASA and its spacecraft. The space agency said communication allows the mission team to command and get some information through signals.
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About NASA ICON Mission
To understand what causes changes in the ionosphere, NASA made the $252 million ICON mission (per Space News) to see how space weather interacts with Earth's weather. This includes observations that revealed the volcanic eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai in the Pacific Ocean in January 2022. The eruption even caused electrical currents that reached the ionosphere.
Space.com said the spacecraft studies almost everything about Earth's ionosphere, too. The report added that solar radiation also reportedly changed how the ionosphere worked. People may find ionosphere between 80 and 640 kilometers (50 to 400 miles) above Earth. Such changes may impact communications technology.
Gizmodo added that the spacecraft have four sensors to take Earth's ultraviolet pictures. The mission's two-year primary mission came to a close in December 2021. But NASA extended the mission's lifespan.
NASA will still have to review ICON in 2023. This is part of NASA's senior assessment of heliophysics missions. In the fiscal year 2023, NASA anticipated spending $6.7 million on ICON operations.
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