The linked article that gives the background on this mission and its recovery is definitely worth reading [0]. In particular, it's worth noting that the STEREO mission was only supposed to last until 2008 and part of the reason it was lost was due to NASA's attempts to reconfigure it to survive the unplanned period it would be out of contact from Earth as it passed behind the Sun. It would be pretty impressive if they were able to get it back in service so long after its planned end-of-life.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/saving-nasas-stereo-b-the-189-million-mile-road-to-recovery" rel="nofollow">http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/saving-nasas-stereo-b-th...</a>
My favorite story about this mission: the engineers bought a (human) casket to ship one of the antennas! <a href="https://astroanecdotes.com/2015/12/27/the-casket-with-an-impact/" rel="nofollow">https://astroanecdotes.com/2015/12/27/the-casket-with-an-imp...</a>
Slightly off-topic, but if you're in to solar/space weather news, I highly recommend you take a look at the suspicious0bservers channel on youtube. Ben does a daily 5-minute blurb on this science-y kind of stuff (stereo has been mentioned a bit of the last few days). Very interesting and not a big time commitment.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/Suspicious0bservers" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/user/Suspicious0bservers</a><p>(Today's news, mentioning the return of stereo <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhSCMR0YP8Q" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhSCMR0YP8Q</a> )
> Mission Operations team over several hours to characterize the <i>attitude</i> of the spacecraft<p>> The STEREO Missions Operations team plans further recovery processes to assess observatory health, re-establish <i>attitude control</i><p>Did they mean altitude? What does attitude mean?