Western Europe`s showcase Giotto spacecraft–en route to a rendezvous with Halley`s comet in March–encountered problems with a crucial antenna Friday but European officials said they expected to resolve the problem.
”They received only very weak signals at the ground station in West Germany. It seems to be only an intermittent problem and it should be corrected,” said Elke Barthel, a spokeswoman for the European Space Agency in Washington.
”They are performing a corrective maneuver to receive the right pointing of the antenna,” she said. ”The antenna (on Giotto) was mispointed and that`s why they received only very weak signals.”
It was not know why the problem cropped up and Richard Laeser, project manager for the Voyager 2 spacecraft that is exploring Uranus, said one of the big 210-foot diameter antennas being used to track Voyager could be used to attempt to pick up radio signals from Giotto.
