YAWN…. December 13, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : She Blinded me with Science , trackbackAt 12:02am, my cell phone went off.
This is never a good sign. Being the good little operations scientist, I checked. Frick! We were in a telemetry format that indicates our spacecraft has safed itself!
Goodness! ICK! Jay and I both got up, I dialed into the telecon number, Jay got the computer and we examined the situation. Sure enough, the bird was in a safed position, something we call "Normal Sun". The "normal" in this case refers to 90degrees, not something ordinary. This "normal sun" orientation puts the spacecraft in a position so that the solar panels keep charge. We may have some other issues, but we won’t lose power.
After 20 minutes or so, we all decided this was real and not some garbled data from the Deep Space Network (DSN). It looked like my instrument was in a safe position, so we could only listen.
For awhile, it got scary. Operations Controllers were sending commands to the spacecraft, but with no command echos. Finally, the she began to reject commands. This is good because it inidicated that at least the spacecraft was getting the signals.
At 1:30am, I kicked off the telecon. There was nothing I could do, so I was going to sleep.
At 2:00am Luna woke up
At 3:45am Luna woke again. Jay got her this time and when he came back he said "it was a sim"
A sim? a SIM? We did an Unannounced Safe mode Simulation at midnight?
Yes, the telescope never was in danger, and never went into Safe mode or Normal Sun. It was fine all of the time. This was a training exercise.
I just wish they hadn’t had done it at midnight!
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Did you know I spent a couple of summers in college working at Intelsat? This is how I know terms like Telemetry. I’m practically a space/satellite/rocket scientist myself.