The spaceship has left Earth’s shadow and temperatures are now normal (File)
Washington:
March 2020, the spacecraft carrying NASA’s new Perseverance rover to the Red Planet, is experiencing technical difficulties and will only run on essential systems, the agency said Thursday.
“The data indicates that the spacecraft had entered a state known as safe mode, likely because part of the spacecraft was a little cooler than expected as Mars 2020 was in Earth’s shadow. “said NASA.
The spacecraft has left Earth’s shadow and temperatures are now normal.
When a ship enters Safe Mode, it shuts down all systems except essential systems until it receives further commands from Mission Control. “Currently, the Mars 2020 mission is completing a comprehensive assessment of the spacecraft’s health and is working to return the spacecraft to nominal configuration for its journey to Mars,” added NASA.
The spacecraft also experienced a delay in establishing its communications link with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., Its mission control.
March 2020 sent its first signal to ground controllers at 9:15 a.m. (1:15 p.m. GMT), but it wasn’t until 11:30 a.m. (3:30 p.m. GMT) that it established telemetry – more detailed data on spacecraft.
Matt Wallace, the mission’s deputy project manager, said the fact that the spacecraft had entered safe mode wasn’t too much of a concern.
“It’s perfectly fine, the spacecraft is happy there,” he said.
“The team is working on this telemetry, they will be looking at the rest of the health of the spacecraft.
“Everything I’ve seen so far looks good, so we’ll know more in a moment.”
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
