Aug 17 1978
From The Space Library
ESA's Geos 2 had apparently suffered a collision in space that did not affect its payload performance but had badly disturbed experiments studying the low-energy plasma, Nature magazine reported. Geos 2 had become fully operational Aug. 2, with all onboard instruments functioning well; prospects for a full 2-yr, mission had been excellent until 07.13 GMT Aug. 5, when UHF telemetry temporarily shut off. The fault had seriously affected the low-energy plasma experiments: the electrical-reference potential of the spacecraft appeared to have jumped 12v for half of each 6-sec spin cycle. This seemed to be the result of slight damage to a solar-array panel that apparently shorted the output of a string of cells to the structure whenever they became illuminated. The design of Geos 2 had attempted to eliminate differential charging; the conductive indium oxide coating of the solar cells was supposed to offer a shorting path in the case of mechanical damage.
The Space Shuttle might some day serve as a vacuum cleaner to gather the many manmade objects floating in space. In the meantime, the geostationary corridor had rapidly become crowded, and spacecraft designers would have to consider the probabilities and consequences of space collisions. (Nature, Aug 17/78, 631)
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