A Parker Solar Probe Instrument Is Temporarily Offline

An instrument on NASA’s Parker Solar Probe was powered off by the spacecraft autonomy system on Feb. 12.

It happened during the application of an approved flight software patch to the Energetic Particle Instrument (EPI-Hi). The instrument team determined the instrument was power cycled prematurely before the patch was completely loaded.

The instrument will remain off for several weeks as the geometry between the spacecraft, Sun, and Earth currently prevents a good uplink. The EPI-Hi is expected to return to normal operations after this blackout period, before the spacecraft begins its 15th close encounter with the Sun on March 12.

The overall spacecraft remains healthy and is functioning as expected and the operation of other Parker instruments has not been impacted.