30 Sep 2009 17:10

Mission operations have been conducted with support of the ESA New Norcia (NNO) ground station.

At the end of the reporting period (DoY 268) Rosetta was at 45.776 million km from Earth (0.30 AU) and the one-way signal travel time was 153 seconds. The distance to the Sun was 190.68 million km (1.27 AU).

Spacecraft

Payload
Many of the instruments were activated as part of the ongoing payload check-out activities. The Standard Radiation Environment Monitor (SREM) continues to run in the background.

ALICE
The instrument is currently OFF. On DoY 263 an update to version 2.07 of the software in the Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory (EEPROM) page 3 was successfully performed.

CONSERT
The instrument is currently OFF.

COSIMA
The instrument is currently OFF. The test activity conducted on DoY 264 was successful and updated the software to version 14.

GIADA
The instrument is currently OFF. The operations conducted in the period DoY 261 to 264 were successful.

MIDAS
The instrument is currently OFF. Activities have been conducted as planned on DoY 265 to update the software version to 650 and perform a functional test. The tests conducted on DoY 268 were nominal.

MIRO
The instrument is currently OFF. A software patch was performed on DoY 262 and another patch has been uplinked to be executed in the next reporting period.

OSIRIS
The instrument is currently OFF. The instrument was operated between DoY 261 and 264.

ROSINA
The instrument is OFF. Activities have been conducted as planned on DoY 265 including the foreseen software patch (v 7.02) in EEPROM to improve functionality; the test was successful.

RPC
The instrument is OFF.

RSI
The instrument is muted.

VIRTIS
The instrument is currently OFF.

LANDER Philae
The instrument is OFF. The Lander activities started on DoY 266 with a successful extended Abbreviated Functional Test (AFT) and with a test of a software patch for the electrical subsystem.

SREM
Since DoY 251/2009 the accumulation settings are configured for active cruise mode.

Future Milestones

The payload check-out number 10 is on-going and will continue for the next week. After this densely packed operational phase, focus will shift to the navigation campaign for the mission's third and last Earth swing-by to take place on 13 November 2009. In the month preceding the Earth swing-by a re-lubrication of reaction wheel B will be performed.

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Legal disclaimer
This report is based on the ESOC mission operations report, WOR #119. Please see the copyright section of the legal disclaimer (bottom of this page) for terms of use.