The European Space Agency is turning to Canada for help after it lost contact with a satellite that has been providing vital weather and climate information to scientists for a decade.
The ESA unexpectedly lost contact with Envisat earlier this week when it failed to connect with the Kiruna ground station in Sweden as it passed overhead on April 8.
A team of experts was quickly assembled to try and restore contact, but with no luck so far.
"In a concerted effort, the recovery team, which included experts from industry, spent the next days trying to re-establish communications with the satellite," the ESA said in a statement Thursday.
"While it is known that Envisat remains in a stable orbit around Earth, efforts to resume contact with the satellite have, so far, not been successful."
As a contingency plan, the Europeans are turning to the Canadian Space Agency's Radarsat program to collect some of the vital data normally gathered by Envisat, the world's largest Earth-monitoring satellite.
Among its abilities, Radarsat monitors ice conditions and tracks marine operations and oil spills on the world's oceans, as well as wind and surface-wave conditions.
Envisat, which was launched in 2002, was only expected to have a life expectancy of about five years, but has served in orbit for over a decade now and completed over 50,000 orbits.
The 8.2-tonne, 10.5-metre satellite collects data on the planet's oceans, ice, land and atmosphere using a suite of 10 sophisticated instruments. That data has been used in thousands of science experiments around the world.
The ESA said it had hoped to continue using Envisat until its successor, Sentinel, is launched.
"The interruption of the Envisat service shows that the launch of the GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) Sentinel satellites, which are planned to replace Envisat, becomes urgent," said Volker Liebig, ESA's director of Earth observation programs, in the statement.
The first Sentinel satellite is expected to launch in 2013 with a mission life expectancy of seven years, which could potentially be extended for another five years.
