I don’t think they’re in trouble for missing the deorbit target.
The concern is that the second stage didn’t perform as expected. What if that affects the primary mission on the next flight? They need to understand the root cause before they fly again.
As the article states, the upcoming Europa Clipper launch requires an upper stage relight to put the spacecraft on the desired trajectory. If the second burn does not go as expected, the mission could be in jeopardy.
Indeed, according to the article the stage misfired 30 minutes after releasing the crewed Dragon capsule. This is pretty serious and could have had disastrous consequences had it malfunctioned earlier.
Clipper is set to release at the "fastest speed ever achieved by a Falcon upper stage", so they really need the rocket functioning flawlessly to avoid jeopardizing the $5B mission.
Not sure about a mission as old as voyager, but most modern missions use CCSDS protocols, which are open and available online.
But just because you know the protocol dues not mean you have enough information to send a valid command. The commands are wrapped in a common protocol, but the commands themselves are typically mission-specific and definitely not made public.
Here’s an example of someone unaffiliated with the mission decoding JWST telemetry. While they were able to identify the packets defined per CCSDS protocols, they do not know the actual content of the packets, which are mission specific.
Thanks for the information. It's more just having fun decoding some telemetry protocol and maybe making some interesting graphs. Like maybe there's some interesting things they don't mind you knowing.
> And as someone else mentioned, the biggest hurdle with getting a command to voyager is access to a 70 m dish. Not many of those floating around…
Maybe I’m wrong, but having it classified as a planetary mission probably funds their positions and a lot of continued research (even if the research is based on data already taken). Reclassifying the mission probably means the scientists need to look for new sources of funding. So I get that they’re not happy, but it sounds like a rational decision on NASA’s part.
There are only 8 hours of downlink time per day. DSN resources are limited and shared among many missions.
Everything was sized based on the expected volume of data that the telescope would be able to take. The instruments only generatedata at a certain rate, and there are inefficiencies involved with slewing between targets. Having a larger recorder or faster downlink would not mean that JWST could take more science data.
The antenna is steered to point towards the DSN antenna on the earth. A larger moving mass would make it harder to maintain telescope pointing while the antenna is moving.
In reality, the antenna pointing is 'paused' during each science observation, unless pointing is needed due to the length of the observation.
Oh, the antenna doesn't need to just point in the general direction of Earth, it needs to point to somewhere in the surface. That makes sense, having a narrower beam would save power and achieve higher bitrates
Does this mean it has only a 12-hour window to transmit? Or there's multiple antennas on Earth?
It uses NASA’s Deep Space Network. There are three stations around the globe (California, Australia, and Spain), spaced so that there is near continuous coverage for deep space missions. JWST points it’s antenna at the station that is currently in view.
However, the ground stations are shared between many missions, so they are not available for JWST all the time. Expectation is that JWST gets 8-12 hours/day of DSN time.
There’s no way to mitigate the risk of statistically random meteorites that can come from any direction.
The primary mitigation is to use predictions of larger events, such as meteor showers, and move the observatory to an orientation that reduces the risk of damage.
