Herschel Status Report - November 2012
Spacecraft
The spacecraft continues to be in good health and is operating nominally.
Payload
Operations for all three instruments, PACS, SPIRE and HIFI, have been nominal during the reporting period. There have been no single event upsets (SEU) causing loss of science observation time, continuing an extended period of very low SEU incidence in the scientific instruments.
Ground Segment
Ground segment operations have been nominal and 100% of the data continues to be recovered. As of 30 November 2012, the approximate completion of the different programme parts was:
| KPGT | Key Programme Guaranteed Time | : | >99% |
| KPOT | Key Programme Open Time | : | >99% |
| GT1 | First in-flight Guaranteed Time | : | >99% |
| OT1p1 | First in-flight Open Time, priority 1 | : | 98% |
| GT2 | Second in-flight Guaranteed Time | : | 95% |
| OT2p1 | Second in-flight Open Time, priority 1 | : | 85% |
| OT1p2+ OT2p2 | First and Second in-flight Open Time, priority 2 | : | 8% |
For more details of the different programme parts, see the "overview of Herschel observing" linked from the right-hand menu.
Mission Operations
Throughout the reporting period, mission operations have been conducted with the support of ESA's New Norcia and Cebreros ground stations. Observational data stored on-board Herschel was received on ground during daily communication passes, each lasting approximately three hours.
Several tests were performed of the communication link to the spacecraft from ESA's new third deep space antenna (DSA 3) at Malargüe in Argentina (20 November) and from the refurbished New Norcia ground station (28 November). All tests were successful, with the few minor issues observed having been followed up and resolved.
Archiving
The ground segment is operating nominally. Data products are generated routinely and ingested into the Herschel Science Archive (HSA).
A new bulk reprocessing of all the science data in the HSA, using the latest release of the data processing software, was started in November and is progressing well.
Future Milestones
- February/March 2013: Predicted end of operational lifetime for scientific observations (exhaustion of the liquid helium for the spacecraft's active cooling system)
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1 July 2013: Start of Post-Operations Phase
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Legal disclaimer
This report is based on the Herschel Mission Manager's report dated 5 December 2012. Please see the copyright section of the legal disclaimer (linked from the home page http://sci.esa.int) for terms of use.