NASA made an addressal about their upcoming SpaceX Crew Dragon departure and splash down. Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley addressed this in a news conference at 10:45 AM EDT Friday july 31 from the International Space Station.
Chris Cassidy, NASA astronaut and the present expedition 63 commander, will be joining for spaceX Demo 2 test flight crew for a 30 minutes news conference.
This conference will take place just two day before Hurley and Behnken are anticipated to return to earth.
The spaceship, Mars 2020, that carried new Rover Perceverance to the red planet is facing technical difficulties. On Thursday the agency reported that it was temporarily running on essential systems.
NASA said, “Data indicate that spacecraft has entered a state known as safe mode, likely because of a part of the spacecraft was little colder than expected while March 2020 was in earth’s shadow.
The temperature are now normal as the spaceship has left earth shadow NASA added, ” right now, the March 2020 mission is completing a full health assessment on the spacecraft and is working to return the spacecraft to a nominal configuration for its journey to mars.”
Matt Wallace, mission deputy project manager said, ” the spacecraft is happy there… the team is working through that telemetry… will know more in a bit.
Wallace’s explanation on the Two Issues:
Wallace has also provided a detailed update on the two issues during the launch operation.
” First, the proximity of spacecraft to earth immediately after launch was saturating the ground Station receivers of NASA’s deep space network. This is a known issue that we have encountered on other planetary missions including during the launch of NASA’s curiosity rover in 2011.”
Wallace talked about the team’s ‘prepared mitigation strategies’ including: detuning the receivers, pointing the antennas slightly off target and to bring the signal within an acceptable range.
“The second issue was a transient event involving temperature on the spacecraft. The mission uses a liquid freon loop to bring heat from the center of the spacecraft to radiators on the cruise stage, which have a view to space.”
He continued about the monitoring of the difference in temperature (warm inlet to radiators and the cooler outlet from the radiators).
The spacecraft entered the earth’s shadow. Due to the blockage of the sun by the earth, caused the outlet temperature to drop. This led the spacecraft to transition into ‘safe mode’. ” Safe mode is a stable and acceptable mode for the spacecraft. Triggering safe mode during this transitional phase is not problematic for Mars 2020.
Wallace has informed that the experts are looking into the matter. They are conducting the operations necessary to move “the spacecraft backout of safe mode and into normal cruise mode.”
This mission was launched on July 30 at 4:50 AM PTD (7:50 AM EDT). The spacecraft landed at Jezero Craters in mars on February 18, 2021 the mission took one mars year i.e. 867 earth days .
