SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the debugging-from-960-million-kilometers-away dept.
A critical moment in NASA'S Juno mission has been postponed while engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory attempt to sort out a mysterious engine issue. If the problem is not resolved quickly, it could reduce the amount of high-quality data the Jupiter-orbiting probe is able to collect during its scientific mission.
On October 19th, at its point of closest approach to Jupiter (called periapsis), the Juno spacecraft was scheduled to perform its final main engine burn, a "period reduction maneuver" that would narrow its orbit from 53.4 days to 2 weeks. Once in its "science orbit," the spacecraft's main data collection phase will commence.
But on Friday, the space agency decided to delay the burn due to an unexpected issue with a pair of helium valves that are part of the engine's fuel pressurization system. As Juno project manager Rick Nybakken said in a news release, these valves "did not operate as expected during a command sequence that was initiated [Thursday]."
"The valves should have opened in a few seconds, but it took several minutes," Nybakken continued. "We need to better understand this issue before moving forward with a burn of the main engine."
http://gizmodo.com/something-went-wrong-with-the-juno-spacecrafts-engine-1787873807
[Source]: NASA
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @06:49PM
Any team that manages these exploration robots is kick ass. It boggles the mind if you really think about it. I sometimes have trouble troubleshooting something I have physical access to, I can't imagine the stress of trying to debug a valve millions of miles away, and all you get is "it took 20x too long to open".
(Score: 2, Funny) by Snospar on Monday October 17 2016, @06:54PM
Couldn't agree more. My daughter phoned from just over 100 miles away because the hot tap on her bath was stuck on... even with me remotely controlling her it took 5 minutes to get the heating and the water turned off.
OK, not "remotely controlling" that sounds way too creepy O_o
Huge thanks to all the Soylent volunteers without whom this community (and this post) would not be possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @07:22PM
Next level parenting app, "control your children's very mind!"