Meanwhile, the science teams in Woomerang had been busy cracking the difficult engineering problems and coming up with new innovative solutions.
Project Snuf
R202A Snuf 01 was a prototype rover for atmospheric re-entry. Targeting Duna and Laythe. It was lightweight and packed less science than Spirit, but only weighted half of it. The current test phase was landing and roving. Recovering from a flip proved to be tough.
Project Deep Sky Scan
After an alarming message from KSC the teams had worked overtime to put project Deep Sky Scan together. Explorer 02 should have entered the sphere of influence of Jool and would need to make its Tylo assisted capture in 50 days. However, KSC was unable to raise the probe.
It turned out that the Deep Space Communication Network was not accurate enough to pinpoint the probe and so the scientists in Woomerang came up with a synthetic aperture array telescope.
Y300A Deep Sky Scan 01 would utilize the rotation of the planet to create an artificial saucer of 56m diameter. The 16 dishes provided enough sensitivity to reconnect with the faraway probe and teams started calculating if the alignment between the planets would be optimal during the time of the burn.
Salyut 01 Controlled Rentry
Another experiment was the controlled re-entry of Salyut 01. Never before had such a large and sturdy object be deposited back into the Kerbin atmosphere. Though it packed quite some heat, its degrading orbit had slowed its velocity that much that the aged space station actually survived the reentry. The data proved very useful in the development of larger vehicles that would be return capable.
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