NASA has revealed that its Stardust spacecraft has survived radiation from the fourth largest solar storm since 1976.
The craft is 200 million km (120 million miles) from the sun and heading towards a rendezvous with the comet Wild 2 in 2002. It is due to return to Earth in 2004 with samples of comet dust and interstellar matter.
The storm, which started on 9 November, was 100,000 times more intense than usual and its high energy protons electrified pixels in the two star-tracking cameras on Stardust.
The craft went into safe mode after automatically trying to determine its attitude using the position of 12 brightest stars. Due to the storm, some of the electrified pixels were misidentified as stars.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers have managed to reset one of the star cameras, used the craft's inertial measurement units to orient the craft, and have recovered the cameras from their proton hits.
Source: Flight International