One of the reasons NASA is not very popular and supported by US taxpayers is that the space agency’s expensive equipment often fails. For example, yesterday, on February 18, NASA officials officially announced that the Parker solar probe, which is expected to run its mission to study the Sun until 2024, unexpectedly took off and shut down – this happened on February 12, but released the data only now. This is probably because experts plan to restore communications with highly specialized equipment as soon as possible, but so far it has not been possible to implement the plan.

Experts said they are trying to restore communication with its equipment to return the space probe to its missions, but so far the Energetic Particle Instrument-Hi module has not been able to be brought out of autonomous emergency mode. Also, NASA engineers added that the shutdown of this module occurred just when installing new software on top of it – the agency’s programmers prepared another patch, but unfortunately it was not possible to successfully install it, although NASA believed it. the patch itself is not the root of the problem, so it is “rolled back” and reinstalled when existing issues are resolved.

“The device will be out of use for several weeks because the probe, the geometry between the sun and solar radio interference will prevent a good uplink. “At the same time, there is no doubt that the Parker solar probe remains fully operational.”NASA experts reported.

The Parker spacecraft has been launched into space relatively recently – in August 2018, the Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle delivered the device into space, after which the probe headed towards the Sun. This mission is unique in its kind because no one had ever studied our star in such detail and at this close range, which cost NASA a substantial $1.5 billion. With this money, scientists from all over the world plan to understand why the Sun’s outer atmosphere (also called “corona”) is much hotter than the surface of the star, as well as how the solar wind (charged flow) Particles emitted from the Sun) reach incredible speeds.

At the end of its mission, the Parker probe will have to crash onto the Sun’s surface, collecting and transmitting the maximum amount of useful information for further study. The only problem is that the burn is scheduled for the end of 2024 and now only for the beginning of 2023. If communication with the probe is not restored, scientists will lose two years of valuable research and data.