In April the Juice spacecraft launched to investigate the icy moons of Jupiter, but there was a problem: an antenna was stuck and wasn't deploying.
Earlier this year, the European Space Agency ’s Juice spacecraft launched on its mission to investigate the icy moons of Jupiter. The launch went off smoothly, but there was a problem during the spacecraft deployment phase: an antenna was stuck and wasn’t deploying properly. After several weeks of work and various attempts at fixes, the Juice team succeeded in getting the antenna deployed, and now ESA has shared more information about the problem and how it was solved.
But when the command was given, cameras on the spacecraft showed that the antenna didn’t budge. “You experience a state of disbelief,” said Juice team member Ronan Le Letty, Senior Mechanisms Engineer for ESA, in a statement. “The most unwanted situation is happening. We checked the picture two, three, four times. We tried again to activate the actuator, but nothing happened.”
To deal with a potentially stuck pin, the team performed just what you might do if something was stuck in place — they gave it a good jiggle. They used the spacecraft’s thrusters to rock it around very slightly, but that didn’t work to free the pin.
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