A nightmare scenario for ground control: a satellite getting out of control, starting to spin about, tens of thousands kilometres away, and no possibility for recovery ... and yet, in the past, two ESA satellites have been recovered from a seemingly hopeless situation: Olympus and SOHO.
Today's transmission tells the story of these impossible missions and puts these into the context of how Europe's Operations Centre ESOC in Darmstadt prepares for all eventualities, including failures.
As ESA's Venus Express approaches its periluous orbital insertion, on 11 April, it is good to know that ground control is prepared to deal with things going wrong, even if the probability for this is low.

SOHO Back From the Dead
10:00:10 There are hundreds of satellites in space, all on different orbits, with different missions and mostly thousands or even millions of Kilometres away. Once a satellite is launched, itís not normally possible to reach it physically. So if something goes wrong you have to be very, very smart to recover it. But sometimes it happens - and ESA has 2 examples of successful recoveries: Olympus, which in the early 1990s was the worldís biggest telecommunications satellite, and more recently the SOHO Solar Observatory, a joint ESA and NASA mission.
10:00:45 SOHO has just celebrated 10 highly successful years in orbit. But there was a moment after a little more than two years in Space when many considered it dead after it lost contact with its ground station. Images: Space with satellites, Control room images Olympus recovery, animation Olympus, then Soho launch, animation and solar eruption
QUOTE. Harold Benfield (Missions operation leader NASA)
10:00:57 Basic