No. 6 - Ongoing Commissioning Activities
The latter included a very complex pointing profile resulting in a triple-spiral scanning of the planet Venus with the +Z axis of the spacecraft, which is also the pointing direction of MIRO. This activity was repeated twice in the reporting period.
On the spacecraft subsystems side several software maintenance activities were carried out, including:
- Update of the Star Trackers' software to allow data multiplexing over the link with the AOCS
- Update of the pointing bias values for the high gain antenna, resulting from the calibration carried out in the previous reporting period
- Uplink of a patch to the AOCS software to avoid autonomous activation of substitution heaters for the high gain antenna motor.
All activities were executed according to plan and in some cases the operations planned for a full night pass could be finished well ahead of time.
The table below shows a chronology of the main activities in the reporting period:
|
Mission Day |
Date |
DOY |
Main Activity |
|
25 |
26/27.03.04 |
86/87 | RSI commissioning pass 1 |
|
26 |
27/28.03.04 |
87/88 | RSI commissioning pass 2 |
|
27 |
28/29.03.04 |
88/89 | RSI commissioning pass 3 |
|
28 |
29/30.03.04 |
89/90 | RSI commissioning pass 4 |
|
29 |
30/31.03.04 |
90/91 | MIRO commissioning pass 1 |
|
30 |
31.03/01.04.04 | 91/92 | MIRO commissioning pass 2 |
|
31 |
01/02.04.04 |
92/93 | MIRO commissioning pass 3 |
At the end of the last New Norcia pass in the reporting period (DOY 093, 08:00) Rosetta was at 10.6 million km from the Earth. The one-way signal travel time was 35.3 seconds.