Joe Palka
speaker
237 appearances
31 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2025
last heard 29 Aug
Joe Palka’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 31 in all, peaking in Dec 2025 with 7.
Appearances
But shortly after launch, it was clear something was wrong with the power system.
The NASA review found a glaring error.
Software that was supposed to point the spacecraft's solar panels towards the sun instead pointed them 180 degrees away from the sun.
The panel said other software flaws made it impossible to recover from the pointing error.
The review cited management deficiencies at both Lockheed Martin, the company that built the spacecraft, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for failing to catch the problems before launch.
Lockheed and NASA both said they had learned lessons and would do better in future.
For NPR News, I'm Joe Palka.
And I'm Giles Snyder.
Lunar Trailblazer launched successfully on February 26th last year.
But shortly after launch, it was clear something was wrong with the power system.
The NASA review found a glaring error.
Software that was supposed to point the spacecraft's solar panels towards the sun instead pointed them 180 degrees away from the sun.
The panel said other software flaws made it impossible to recover from the pointing error.
The review cited management deficiencies at both Lockheed Martin, the company that built the spacecraft, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for failing to catch the problems before launch.
Lockheed and NASA both said they had learned lessons and would do better in future.
For NPR News, I'm Joe Palka.
This is NPR News.
The probe is called MAVEN, an acronym for Mars Atmospheric and Volatile Evolution.
Its mission is to help scientists understand the climate history of Mars.
It's been orbiting the red planet for more than a decade, where it not only studied the Martian atmosphere, it also relayed signals from the rovers operating on the Martian surface.
Showing 101–120 of 237 · page 6 of 12
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