Soho Recovery Thermal Activities

SOHO is a spacecraft, the aim of which is to study the sun in its various aspects (helioseismology, solar corona, solar wind). On June 25^th, 1998, SOHO was lost. After approximately 40 days of silence, radio-contact was re-established on August 8^th. Since then, the aim of the scientific community was to recover this already fruitful but still promising mission. The recovery was undertaken by ESA, NASA and MMS. On September 25^th, 1998, SOHO was put back into normal mode.

Among all the challenges to be faced to recover the spacecraft, thermal ones were not the least. This paper deals with the thermal control strategy which was set up to recover the spacecraft and with the thermal analyses used to validate it.