NASA’s newest robotic explorer, launched from Virginia to unlock the mysteries of the moon’s atmosphere, ran into rough waters by developing a glitch hours after lift off.

NASA engineers have fixed the glitch that threatened to derail the space probe on its way to the moon, the space agency said today.

The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) suffered a “reaction wheel issue” soon after it was launched on top of a 90-foot rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia, on Friday, NASA officials said.

They reported that the spacecraft’s reaction wheels — which spin to position and stabilise LADEE in space without using precious thruster fuel — unexpectedly shut down.

By Saturday afternoon, the glitch had been traced to safety limits programmed into LADEE before launch to protect the reaction wheel system, NASA officials said.

Those fault protection limits caused LADEE to switch off its reaction wheels shortly after powering them up, according to a mission status update.

Engineers have since disabled the safety limits causing the glitch and taken extra care in restoring the fault-protection protocols.

“Our engineers will determine the appropriate means of managing the reaction wheel fault protection programme. Answers will be developed over time and will not hold up checkout activities,” NASA’s LADEE project manager Butler Hine said in a statement.

“The reaction wheel issue noted soon after launched was resolved a few hours later,” added NASA Ames Research Centre Director Pete Worden.

“The LADEE spacecraft is healthy and communicating with mission operators.”

NASA’s Ames Centre developed and built the LADEE spacecraft, and is overseeing its mission operations.

NASA’s $280-million LADEE moon mission is aimed at studying the moon’s thin atmosphere and solving long-standing mysteries of the moon’s dust.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW