Posted: Thu, Jul 17, 2003, 6:09 PM ET (2209 GMT)
The NASA-ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft has emerged from a period of partial communications blackouts, ESA reported Thursday. Contact with SOHO had been intermittent since late June because a problem with the spacecraft’s high-gain antenna kept it from pointing at the Earth. Although project officials originally said that this problem would keep the spacecraft from returning any data during the blackout period, engineers were able to retrieve some data from the spacecraft by using its low-gain antenna and larger receiving antennas on Earth. While the problem with the high-gain antenna persists, the spacecraft's orientation in its halo orbit around the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange point has shifted to allow the antenna to again point towards Earth. Blackout periods of between nine and 16 days will persist once every three months until the antenna problem on SOHO is resolved. The rest of the spacecraft continues to function well, however, and scientists are optimistic that it can continue to provide data on the Sun for the next five years, until a replacement spacecraft, the Solar Dynamics Observatory, can be launched.

Related Links:

•  ESA press release
•  SPACE.com article