Madrid. The ship June, of NASA, had an interruption in the sending of data to the controllers of the mission from its on-board computer, corresponding to the past flyby of Jupiter and its moon Io.
The problem—the inability to directly access the spacecraft’s memory that stores the scientific data collected during the flyby—was likely caused by a radiation spike when the probe flew through an area of Jupiter’s magnetosphere with high radiation intensity.
Controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and their partners successfully rebooted the computer and, on December 17, put the spacecraft into safe mode, a precautionary state in which only essential systems function.
As of December 22, the efforts to recover the flyby data have yielded positive results, and the team is already downloading the scientific data. There is no indication that these data obtained at the time of closest approach to Jupiter, or during the spacecraft’s flyby of Io, have been negatively affected, reports the Southwest Research Institute, which leads the investigations of the mission.
The rest of the scientific data collected during the flyby is expected to be sent back to Earth over the next week, at which time its status will be verified. The ship is expected to exit safe mode within a week.
The next flyby of June to Jupiter will take place on January 22.
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