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No. 16 - Cruise Phase Begins

No. 16 - Cruise Phase Begins

Report for week 4 to 11 JuneThe first part of the Rosetta Commissioning Phase was successfully completed in the reporting period. The Cruise 1 Phase formally started on 7 June 2004 and will last until the start of the second and last commissioning slot in September/October 2004. The last payload activities in this phase, the repetition of OSIRIS measurements (slot 2b), were successfully completed.

On the subsystems side the first battery was reconditioned by discharging it to a lower level of charge, to be kept for the entire Cruise 1. Some new On-Board Control Procedures (OBCPs), developed post-launch by the ESOC Flight Control Team to support on-board software maintenance activities, were uplinked to the spacecraft. They will be first used in the next reporting period to ease Star Tracker and Camera software patching activities.

The spacecraft was slewed to bring the Sun to +50° above the +X axis for 24 hours (8 June), then up to +70° on 9 June, to characterise the thermal effects of high solar aspect angles at short Sun distances (currently still below 0.9 AU). During this activity, an S-band carrier without modulation was switched on via MGA / TRSP2 and successfully acquired at New Norcia in coherent mode.

Finally, reconditioning of the second battery started on the 10 June.

For the second time a ground station pass over New Norcia was skipped.

The table below shows a chronology of the main activities in the reporting period:

Mission Day

Date

DOY

Main Activity

95

04/05.06.04

156/157

OSIRIS extra slot pass 2
Start battery 1 discharge

96

05/06.06.04

157/158

Monitoring
Dump OSIRISI data

97

06/07.06.04

158/159

Skipped ground contact!

98

07/08.06.04

159/160

Monitoring
Dump OSIRISI data
End battery 1 discharge

99

08/09.06.04

160/161

Thermal characterisation +50°
Uplink new OBSM OBCPs

100

09/10.06.04

161/162

Thermal characterisation +70°
MGA S-band carrier acquisition test

101

10/11.06.04

162/163

Monitoring pass
Start battery 2 discharge

At the end of the last New Norcia pass in the reporting period (DOY 163, 01:40) Rosetta was at 49 million km from the Earth. The one-way signal travel time was 2 minutes 44 seconds.

Last Update: 1 September 2019
28-Mar-2024 08:42 UT

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