Heat treatment straightens out MARSIS boom     • alert   •
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Flight controllers on the Mars Express mission successfully
deployed the troublesome first boom of the MARSIS experiment.
All it needed was a little bit of heat.  When the first antenna
began to open on 4 May, all but one of the 13 segments locked
into position correctly. One section, probably the 10th, had
unfolded, but was not locked in place. It was almost as though
the boom had a crick in its neck after being folded up for so
long en-route to, and in orbit around, Mars.  The mission
engineers reasoned that since the cold of space can affect the
Kevlar and fibre glass of the boom, they needed to heat the area
in the hopes that it would expand the cold part, forcing the
segment to lock out properly. So they swung the spacecraft
around so that the cold side of the boom faced the distant sun.
After an hour, the data suggested that the plan had worked, and
the final piece had locked into