A week after failing to phone home, NASA's Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR) silently slips through space.
The Mission Operations team at the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland has yet to hear a signal from the probe. The spacecraft is now traveling at some 3.8 miles per second, or 13,600 miles per hour (6.1 kilometers per second). APL built and is managing the space mission for NASA.
Ground instruments have now found three spacecraft segments, one of which is the larger CONTOUR. The other objects are speculated to be parts of the solid rocket motor used to kick the spacecraft out of Earth orbit on August 15.
The three objects are on a trajectory taking them far from the Sun and Earth, making further ground observations of CONTOUR and the segments unlikely.
Scaling back efforts
If CONTOUR can still operate, it would have completed -- as of today -- a first cycle of having each of its two transmitters attempt to send a signal through each of three antennas. To date, nothing has been heard.
Near continuous monitoring for a signal from CONTOUR -- done through NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) -- is set to stop late this weekend. After that, efforts will be scaled back to once a week - a schedule that will be maintained until early December when the spacecraft will come into a more favorable angle for receiving a signal from Earth.
APL spokeswoman, Helen Worth said that on Sunday the DSN continual coverage is set to end.
Monitoring will then shift to a few hours one day a week until early December. At that time, the DSN will again provide two to three days continual coverage.
"We will have the favorable alignment of the Earth with the four antennas on top of the spacecraft. While that's our best shot, we are not very optimistic that we'll get anything," Worth told SPACE.com.
"We will go back to weekly monitoring after the 3 days and continue that until the end of December. If
we have heard nothing then it's probable that the mission will end. But APL has pulled miracles out of its hat before. So don't count us out just yet," Worth said.
Chances are small
As far as contacting the spacecraft this week, APL's Robert Farquhar, CONTOUR mission director said: "We known there's not much room for optimism through this week. Even the second week of December, when we have our best shot, chances are small. But it's still worth monitoring."
Meanwhile, NASA is likely to announce members of an anomaly investigation board later this week, charged with the duty to understand what happened to the $159 million CONTOUR mission.
The $159 million mission was rocketed into Earth orbit July 3.
CONTOUR circled the Earth for more than a month, then ignited its STAR 30BP solid-propellant rocket motor on August 15. That motor burn pushed the probe out of its Earth parking orbit, on a pathway that would lead to close encounters with two comets over the next four years.
Ground controllers, however, lost contact with the craft following ignition of the rocket motor.
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