Trending News Today is NASA loses contact with ICON spacecraft.
After technical issues, a three-year-old NASA space science Spacecraft has been out of contact for nearly 2 weeks. NASA already announced on December 7th that the ionosphere connection Explorer spacecraft has not connected with the ground stations since Nov 25th.The ionospheric Connection Explorer satellite is commonly referred to as the ICON satellite. This is specifically intended for ionosphere research. The Northrop Grumman aircraft was attached to a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket that was launched at a height of 39,000 feet. Which carrying the border between the earth and space.
Despite numerous delays and cancellations to the mission. The ICON mission, according to NASA, is essentially crucial. And even this spacecraft is now the sole method for investigating that specific area of the earth’s atmosphere. Because the Ionosphere is too high for balloons and too low for other spacecraft.
ICON lost touch on November 25
According to a NASA report. There were no serious technical issues or failures before this incident occurred. Another critical factor is that ICON includes a command timer. If it has gone more than eight days without receiving commands from Earth. It reboots all satellite systems.
On December 5, the ICON command timer was planned to activate. Engineers were unable to make contact with the satellite even after this time. The possibility of an explosion or a collision between the ICON and a piece of space debris was ruled out by NASA. As US Space Surveillance Network did not detect any indications of damage to the spacecraft.
According to trendz online news, From November 26, 2022, the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) team of NASA has been unable to communicate with FM06. Which is the eighth CYGNSS spacecraft. To get a signal and create a link, the crew is still working. The other seven spacecraft have been collecting science data and are still operating regularly.
