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| No. 21 - SMART-1 as a Bench Test for Electric Propulsion |
The spacecraft is now flying its 264th orbit, in good status and with all functions performing nominally. After the eclipse season, the new thrusting strategy is progressing well with long thrust arcs around perigee occurring every orbit for about 10.5 hours. During the coming month this will be increased to 14 hours per orbit. |
| Date: 07 Apr 2004 |
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| No. 20 - Eclipse Period Over |
| The spacecraft has completed over 250 orbits, is in good status and with all functions performing nominally. The eclipse season is now over, with the last eclipse occurring on 21 March. The longest eclipse occurred on 13 March (lasted for 2 hours and 15 minutes) and stressed the power systems to their maximum limit. The spacecraft performed extremely well throughout this period and the power and the thermal control systems have been able to overcome this "long night" without a glitch. |
| Date: 22 Mar 2004 |
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| No. 19 - Entering Eclipse Period |
| The spacecraft is now in its 233rd orbit, in good status and with all functions performing nominally. Starting on 24 February 2004 operation of the electric propulsion drive was resumed. The engine is turned on every orbit around perigee for about 1.5 hours. |
| Date: 04 Mar 2004 |
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| No. 18 - Payload Commissioning |
Spacecraft Status The spacecraft is now in its 216th orbit, in good status and with all functions performing nominally. The electric propulsion engine was switched off on 30 January 2004 for a period of three weeks to allow instrument commissioning activities to take place. |
| Date: 13 Feb 2004 |
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| No. 17 - Ion Engine Switched Off and Commissioning Begins |
Spacecraft Status
The spacecraft is now in its 207th orbit, in good status and with all functions performing nominally. As in previous weeks, the ion drive has only generated thrust around the perigee point to fine-tune the altitude of the apogee point. This strategy has produced a noticeable increase in apogee height, see plot below, which is necessary to minimize the duration of eclipse periods that will occur during March.
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| Date: 04 Feb 2004 |
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| No. 16 - Ready for payload commissioning |
| The spacecraft is now in its 194th orbit, in good status and with all functions performing nominally.
As in previous weeks, the ion drive has only generated thrust around the perigee point to fine-tune the altitude of the apogee point. This strategy has produced a noticeable increase in apogee height, see plot below, which is necessary to minimize the duration of eclipse periods that will occur during March.
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| Date: 21 Jan 2004 |
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| No.15 - Preparing for the payload commissioning |
| The spacecraft is now in its 187th orbit, in good status and with all functions performing nominally. In order to fine tune the altitude of the apogee point, required to minimise the length of the eclipses due to occur in March, the ion drive is currently being used only when the spacecraft is around perigee. This strategy will last until the end of January. |
| Date: 15 Jan 2004 |
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| No. 14 - SMART-1 Finally Escapes the Radiation Belts |
| The spacecraft is now in its 176th orbit, in good status and with all functions performing nominally. The first mission target, namely to exit the most dangerous part of the radiation belts, has been achieved! The pericentre altitude (the closest distance of the spacecraft from the centre of the Earth) will reach the prelaunch target of 20 000 km on 7 January 2004. |
| Date: 06 Jan 2004 |
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| No. 13 - Largest Weekly Increase in Orbit |
| Overall status, current activities and planned activities The spacecraft is now in its 169th orbit, in good status and with all functions performing nominally. The spacecraft has been functioning in electric propulsion mode for the whole week, continuously thrusting since the flame-out and subsequent entry into safe mode last week. This has allowed SMART-1 to perform its largest orbit increase since the start of the mission: 2000 km added to the semi-major axis in one week! |
| Date: 30 Dec 2003 |
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| No. 12 - 68 hours of uninterrupted firing of the ion engine! |
| Overall status, current activities and planned activities The spacecraft is now in its 158th orbit, in good status and with all functions performing nominally. Since the procedure to automatically re-start the engine after a flame-out has been uploaded to the on-board software, the spacecraft has been continuously operated in electric propulsion mode even at orbital altitudes below 10 000 km. |
| Date: 23 Dec 2003 |
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| No. 11 - Ion drive smashes 1000 hours milestone! |
| Overall status, current activities and planned activities SMART-1 has recently broken through the barrier of 1000 hours of cumulated thrust! This happened at precisely 20:00 UTC on 11 December 2003. The spacecraft is now in its 150th orbit, in good status and with all functions performing nominally. |
| Date: 16 Dec 2003 |
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| No.10 - SMART-1 is flying at full speed |
Overall status, current activities and planned activities The spacecraft is now in its 139th orbit, in good operational status and with all functions performing nominally. As previously, the spacecraft was operated in electric propulsion mode almost continuously. |
| Date: 09 Dec 2003 |
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| No. 9 - SMART-1 is changing thrust strategy to avoid long eclipses |
| Overall status, current activities and planned activities The spacecraft is now in its 130th orbit, in good health and all its functions are performing nominally. As in previous weeks, the spacecraft was operated in electric propulsion mode almost continuously. We have, however, experienced three flame-outs. |
| Date: 04 Dec 2003 |
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| No. 8 - SMART-1 is working well and continues thrusting |
Overall status, current activities and planned activities The spacecraft is now in its 120th orbit and has continued to function very well. As in previous weeks, the spacecraft was operated in electric propulsion mode almost continuously - only interupted during eclipse periods. |
| Date: 28 Nov 2003 |
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| No. 7 - SMART-1 is spiralling out through the Earth's radiation belts |
Overall status, current activities and planned activities.
The spacecraft is now in its 102nd orbit and has been functioning very well since the last anomaly occurred on November 5. SMART-1 has now operated flawlessly for more than 12 days. |
| Date: 19 Nov 2003 |
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| No. 6 - SMART-1 is flying at full speed through the Earth's radiation belts |
Overall status, current activities and planned activities
The spacecraft is now in its 90th orbit and has been behaving really well during the last five days. The last anomaly, an Electric Propulsion flame out, occurred on November 5. From then, SMART-1 has operated flawlessly. In this same period the solar activity has dropped considerably. This has been mainly due to the rotation of the solar disk, which has moved the active sunspot regions away from the Earth direction. This is an indirect confirmation of the suspicions that many of the problems the spacecraft was experiencing last week were caused by the intense radiation environment.
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| Date: 11 Nov 2003 |
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| No. 5 - SMART-1 is finding her way through the radiation storms!! |
Overall status, current activities and planned activities
The spacecraft is now in its 78th orbit and has been flying for the last ten days in an intense radiation environment. This was caused by the recent, exceptional solar and geomagnetic activity. A series of intense solar flares occurred in the active sunspots regions 488 and 486 (see figure 1) and associated coronal mass ejections have generated extreme geomagnetic storms. Fortunately these active regions are expected to exit the solar disk in a couple of days, due to the Sun's rotation, and the number of observedsolar flares should significantly drop. |
| Date: 04 Nov 2003 |
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| No. 4 - SMART-1 completes one month in orbit |
Overall status, current activities and planned activities
The spacecraft is now in its 64th orbit and has been flying in space for one month! The main activity of the last week was to continue the thrust firings of the electric propulsion engine in order to boost the spacecraft orbit. This operation was limited due to problems with the local radiation environment as a result of the recent, high intensity solar activity. The engine has now generated thrust for a total cumulated time of about 300 hours. |
| Date: 29 Oct 2003 |
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| No. 3 - SMART-1 completes 50 orbits |
Overall status, current activities and planned activities The spacecraft is now completing its 50th orbit and has completed more than 560 hours in space. The main activity of the last week has been to repeatedly use the electric propulsion engine to gradually alter the spacecraft's orbit. This is limited to around 15 hours a day based on whether the spacecraft is in eclipse. So far the engine has generated thrust for an accumulated time of about 240 hours. |
| Date: 21 Oct 2003 |
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| No. 2 - Early Ion Drive Performance |
| After more than 32 hours of accumulated thrust, the SMART-1 electric propulsion system (EPS), with a SNECMA PPS-1350-G Hall-Effect thruster, is now fully tuned for nominal operations under space conditions. |
| Date: 06 Oct 2003 |
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