SOHO Sunscan

Scientists lose contact with SOHO solar spacecraft
Infobeat Story

U.S. and European scientists have lost contact with the SOHO spacecraft, which has been circling and studying the sun for the past two years, the European Space Agency said Friday. ESA said ground controllers lost contact with the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory at 1.16 a.m. Thursday and have been unable to re-establish contact since that time. The satellite, a joint project of ESA and the NASA, is programmed to automatically reorient itself towards the sun when an anomaly occurs but has so far failed to do so. ESA and NASA recently decided to extend SOHO's mission to 2003 so it could observe dark sunspots on the sun's surface, which are expected to peak around the year 2000.