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Report for period 19 February to 21 March 2010

Mission operations of the Herschel space observatory continued nominally during the reporting period, with the spacecraft and subsystems all performing as expected.

The Venus Express spacecraft and instruments performed nominally during the reporting period. Two solar array tilting tests were successfully performed on 15 and 25 February. These were set up to validate a special solar array orientation for future atmospheric drag experiments. The last week in the reporting period saw the start of the Venus Express atmospheric drag experiment (ADE) campaign #3a, which runs from 22 to 28 February.

Main events and Activities

The Phobos flyby campaign has started. The campaign's first flyby was on 16 February when Mars Express passed the Martian moon at an altitude of 991 km. Three more Phobos flybys were completed within the following 12 days at increasingly smaller altitudes. The campaign continues with eight more flybys planned in March, and the closest flyby will be on 3 March. A set of manoeuvres on 15 and 22 February changed the spacecraft's orbit to a 131:37 resonance to facilitate the close Phobos flybys. This orbit resonance is an intermediate step to the final 88:25 resonance, to be reached in March at the end of the Phobos observation campaign.

The reporting period covers two weeks of Rosetta mission operations. This period was dedicated to further payload maintenance activities in preparation of the upcoming mission phases and the 12th payload check-out, which is planned for April-May 2010. The RTOF, the time of flight sensor, one of the three sensors of ROSINA, the neutral and ion mass spectrometer, has shown significant improvements during these tests. The solar generator of the Philae lander was successfully tested on 24 February by exposing it to the Sun for nearly 1 hour.