[amsat-bb] SOHO is alive

[Joe Fitzgerald <jfitzgerald@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 Nr 28-98        Paris, 4 August 1998


  SOHO spacecraft contacted

  Contact  has been re-established with the ESA/NASA Solar and
Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) following six weeks of silence.

  Signals  sent yesterday through the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN)
station at  Canberra, Australia, were answered at 22:51 GMT in the form
of
bursts  of  signal lasting from 2 to 10 seconds. These signals were
recorded
both  by  the  NASA  DSN  station  and  the ESA Perth station. Contact
is
being  maintained  through  the  NASA  DSN  stations  at Goldstone
(California), Canberra and Madrid (Spain).

  Although  the  signals  are  intermittent  and  do  not  contain any
data  information,  they show that the spacecraft is still capable of
receiving  and  responding to ground commands. The slow process of
regaining
control  of  the  spacecraft  and  restoring  it  to  an operational
attitude
will  commence  immediately,  with  attempts  to initiate data
transmissions
in  order  to  perform  an  initial  assessment  of  the  spacecraft
on-board
  conditions.

  Radio contact with SOHO, a joint mission of the European Space Agency
and  NASA, was interrupted on 25 June (see ESA press releases N°24, 25
and
  26-98). More information on SOHO, including mission status reports is
  available on the Internet at http://sohowww.estec.esa.nl or via the
new  ESA science website: http://sci.esa.int


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