On Wednesday night, space weather enthusiasts and professionals alike were shocked as news spread that after a successful week in orbit, NASA’s ICON space weather satellite had suddenly gone silent. Launched into orbit on October 10th, ICON was designed to study relationships between Earth’s upper atmosphere and space weather, and was an important advancement in our understanding of the interactions between those two phenomena.
ICON was designed specifically to measure this particular relationship at a low-altitude, during which the spacecraft observed and measured infrared and ultraviolet light radiation, electric and magnetic fields, and charged-particles coming from the Sun. This new mission was intended to provide new data that researchers could use to better understand things like the effects of space weather on radio communcations, GPS navigation, and satellite navigation, as well as radiation exposure.
NASA was expecting ICON to be provide a good data return for this mission, however, the spacecraft abruptly went into safe mode without any explanation at 6:25 pm EST on Wednesday night. Unfortunately, attempts to re-establish control of the satellite have been unsuccessful, leaving the mission in limbo.
Space weather experts are desperately attempting to figure out if the cause of this anomaly is an onboard problem, or something more linked to the environment in which ICON is orbiting. While no one can definitively say what has caused the satellite to go into silent mode, speculation ranges from some sort of technical problem to the possibility of it hitting some sort of debris in space.
At the moment, the data ICON had collected before its sudden silence will have to remain a mystery until NASA successfully re-establishes control over the satellite. Until then, all researchers can do is wait and hope that their investment in the new ICON mission is not lost forever.