ESA’s Bruno Sousa, Cluster operations Manager: “As a result of this glitch, our system started conducting the pass as scheduled, but as it attempted to change the data rate on the spacecraft, it lost contact because the station was late in doing the same, and after timing-out, it gave up and aborted the pass. This being a Sunday, I was at home playing with my kids, initially oblivious of what was actually happening at ESOC.” How a serious problem was detected from… his kitchen!
Today’s blog post was contributed by Bruno Sousa, spacecraft operations manager for the Cluster mission at ESA’s ESOC mission control centre, Darmstadt, Germany. Cluster was launched in 2000 and comprises four identical spacecraft (Rumba, Salsa, Samba and Tango) orbiting in tight coordination with e…
