NASA Hears Signal From ‘Lost’ Spacecraft After Two Years Of Silence

A ‘lost’ spacecraft which has remained silent for two years has re-established contact with NASA this week.

Communications with the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatories (known as the STEREO-B) were lost on October 1 2014.

The spacecraft - one of two identical sun-watching robots - fell silent during a test of its command loss timer.

NASA said in a statement, ‘On Aug. 21, 2016, contact was reestablished with one of NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatories, known as the STEREO-B spacecraft, after communications were lost on Oct. 1, 2014.

‘Over 22 months, the STEREO team has worked to attempt contact with the spacecraft. Most recently, they have attempted a monthly recovery operation using NASA’s Deep Space Network, or DSN, which tracks and communicates with missions throughout space.

‘The DSN established a lock on the STEREO-B downlink carrier at 6:27 p.m. EDT. The downlink signal was monitored by the Mission Operations team over several hours to characterize the attitude of the spacecraft and then transmitter high voltage was powered down to save battery power. The STEREO Missions Operations team plans further recovery processes to assess observatory health, re-establish attitude control, and evaluate all subsystems and instruments.’