NASA reestablishes contact with one of two TRACERS satellites

WASHINGTON — NASA has restored contact with one of a pair of space science satellites that ran into problems shortly after its July launch.

In a Sept. 11 statement, NASA said it reconnected with SV1, one of two identical Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites, or TRACERS, launched July 23.

The other spacecraft, SV2, completed post-launch commissioning without issue. SV1, however, had a power subsystem problem two days after launch that caused intermittent contacts. On Aug. 5, NASA said SV1 appeared to operate only when its solar arrays were in sunlight. Controllers planned to try restoring communications later in August, when the arrays were better aligned with the sun.

The Sept. 11 update, NASA’s first since Aug. 5, gave no new details about the problem. The mission team “is working to recover the spacecraft and establish science operations,” the agency said.

TRACERS is designed to use two spacecraft, passing through the same region of space up to two minutes apart, to study how the solar wind couples with Earth’s magnetic field. It’s not clear how science goals may change if only one spacecraft, built by Millennium Space Systems, is working.

TRACERS launched on a Falcon 9 rideshare mission that also carried several other NASA smallsats. They included Athena EPIC, or Economical Payload Integration Cost, a satellite with contributions from NASA, the U.S. Space Force and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The mission will test modular satellite designs and an Earth observation instrument.

On Aug. 5, NASA reported Athena EPIC never transmitted a beacon signal after launch, making it harder for controllers to identify the spacecraft and command it. That was the agency’s last update until Sept. 11.

In its Sept. 11 statement to SpaceNews, NASA said mission partners and manufacturer NovaWurks had confirmed the spacecraft’s location and were working to restore communications. “The team is also working to determine the cause of the initial missed signal acquisition and any factors that may have contributed to the delayed communication downlinks,” the agency said.

Another payload from the same launch, though, is performing well. NASA’s Polylingual Experimental Terminal, or PExT, is flying on the Bard satellite built by York Space Systems. PExT is testing communications across multiple satellite networks, including NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, or TDRS, system, along with commercial services.

NASA said Sept. 9 that Bard commissioning was complete and PExT commissioning was underway, with work set to wrap up by the end of September.

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