Genesis Mission Status Update
25 Apr 2002
(Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
http://www.genesismission.org/mission/statusupdate.html
On Sunday, the second strongest solar storm since launch passed over the spacecraft: high-energy protons at a level several orders of magnitude higher than normal bombarded the spacecraft. Due to previous improvements in the onboard software, the spacecraft weathered this well.
During the solar storm, the star tracker lost track four times. The Attitude Control software handled the situation as intended so that overall spacecraft performance was unaffected and all daily maneuvers were completed as scheduled.
A Deep Space Network pass on Friday, April 19, revealed that a minor lapse in the solar wind concentrator occurred at 19:36 UTC on Wednesday, April 17, when the actual rejection grid voltage did not match the requested voltage. Either the solar environment or a random high-voltage arc in the rejection grid could have caused the fault.
After the science team analyzed it, the concentrator was turned back on and the rejection grid was tested. The concentrator performed exactly as it had earlier this month before the solar storm. Following the test, the concentrator was configured for a slightly lower rejection grid limit voltage and put back in autonomous mode.