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| No. 163 - Quadrature Operations |
Report for Period 21 December to 27 December 2008
Nominal operations were conducted during the reporting period. The spacecraft is currently in quadrature phase, when the Sun-Spacecraft-Earth angle is between 75° and 95°. |
| Date: 30 Dec 2008 |
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| No. 162 - Start of Quadrature Phase |
Report for Period 14 December to 20 December 2008 The Venus Express spacecraft entered nominally in the quadrature phase - the period during which the Sun-Spacecraft-Earth angle is between 75° and 95°. During the quadrature phase revised operating constraints on the VMC lead to the necessity for changing the spacecraft attitude to prevent unacceptable illumination of the VMC. To achieve this attitude fake ephemerides on the positions of the spacecraft and the Earth are uploaded to Venus Express. The first tilted communications pass was on 19 December 2008. |
| Date: 24 Dec 2008 |
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| No. 161 - Mission Update |
Report for Period 7 December to 13 December 2008 Nominal operations were conducted during the reporting period. VIRTIS continues to be operated in the visual channels only. Time correlation was performed on DOY 344. Radio Science Investigation (RSI) occultation measurements were taken during five ground station passes in the reporting period. |
| Date: 17 Dec 2008 |
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| No. 108 - Mission Operations Update |
Report for Period 1 November to 5 December 2008
The reporting period covers five weeks of active cruise phase dedicated to remaining payload check-out 8 (PC8) tests (for RSI) and investigation activities linked to anomalies recorded during the payload check-out and the asteroid fly-by phase. |
| Date: 10 Dec 2008 |
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| No. 160 - Cebreros Resumes Operations |
Report for Period 30 November to 6 December 2008 Nominal operations were conducted during the reporting period. The first day of the reporting period was the last day of the extended maintenance downtime for the Cebreros ground station. On this last day (DOY 335) the New Norcia ground station performed the communication pass. The Cebreros ground station was returned to operations on DOY 336 and subsequently resumed to support the daily communication passes for Venus Express. |
| Date: 10 Dec 2008 |
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| No. 159 - Mission Update |
Report for Period 23 November to 29 November 2008 Nominal operations were conducted during the reporting period. Because of on-going maintenance activities at Cebreros, the New Norcia (NNO) ground station was used for communication with the spacecraft. Some of these communication passes were combined with radio science occultation experiments. On two occasions NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) stations were used to support communication with the spacecraft. |
| Date: 03 Dec 2008 |
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