ESA Science & Technology - Status Report Archive
Status report archive
Status report archive
Mission Status Final commissioning operations for the MARSIS instrument - primarily the commissioning and calibration of the monopole antenna - is being completed. Following these activities, the MARSIS radar will be fully operational.
Published: 22 May 2006
Mission StatusINTEGRAL operations continue smoothly with the spacecraft, instruments and ground segment performing nominally. The next observing Announcement of Opportunity (AO-4) opened on 13 March 2006 as planned and closed on 21 April 2006. The AO will cover one year of observing starting on 17 August 2006 and includes a key programme...
Published: 22 May 2006
Mission Status The four spacecraft and instruments are operating nominally. The short eclipse season has just finished and a few anomalies have been observed due to the aging of the batteries. These have proven, however, that the spacecraft can survive a short eclipse with minimum power in the batteries and it will give some experience for the...
Published: 22 May 2006
The Cassini Orbiter continues to make significant discoveries around Saturn. A series of papers recently published in Science on the Enceladus observations revealed a moon which is as intriguing as Jupiter's moon Europa. Strong evidence has been found of the presence of liquid water in underground pockets near the South Pole.
Published: 22 May 2006
Mission StatusThe spacecraft status is nominal, with the High Gain Antenna (HGA) Z-axis in a fixed position. On 7 March a nominal manoeuvre (station keeping and momentum management) was performed and 0.0146 kg of fuel was used. The remaining hydrazine is 118 kg. The solar array degradation after 123 months of flight is 18.25%, which corresponds...
Published: 22 May 2006
Version 9.1 of the ISO Data Archive (IDA) was released on 15 March. It includes an automatic query to other archives via the object coordinates and interoperability with the XMM-Newton and INTEGRAL archives. Also included is VOSpec, a tool developed at ESAC to display spectra from ISO and other VO-compliant archives. Two new Highly Processed...
Published: 22 May 2006
Mission StatusThe outcome of the NASA Sun-Solar System Connections 2005 Senior Review held on 14-15 November was positive for Ulysses. The panel recommended continuation of the mission until March 2008 as proposed. This is reflected in the NASA budget allocation for the project. All spacecraft subsystems are operating nominally. On 1 June 2006,...
Published: 22 May 2006
Mission StatusThe Hubble spacecraft is operating nominally. All science instruments of Hubble - with the exception of STIS - are delivering data for frontline science.
Published: 22 May 2006
Operations have been proceeding nominally with activity levels well above the originally foreseen load. The AMIE team is providing, on a weekly basis, topical image sequences for publication on the main ESA Web portal.
Published: 17 May 2006
Mission StatusXMM-Newton operations continue smoothly with the spacecraft, instruments and ground segment performing nominally.
Published: 17 May 2006
Report for Period 28 April - 12 May 2006The reporting period covers two weeks of cruise, in which all scheduled ground station passes were used to recover telemetry stored during the solar conjunction. The level of activities remains minimal. The spacecraft will remain configured for solar conjunction until 18 May.
Published: 16 May 2006
Report for period 05 May to 13 May 2006 On 6 May 2006 at 13:30 Venus Express executed the last orbital manoeuvre to reach itsoperational orbit as planned at the pericenter passage 12 hours later. The achieved orbit is veryclose to the target reference orbit and is going to be maintained throughout the mission.
Published: 15 May 2006
Report for period 28 April to 04 May 2006 With two orbit control manoeuvres (ALM#4 and ALM#5) executed in the reporting period theapocentere lowering phase of the orbit insertion has been successfully completed. ThePericentre Control Manoeuvre #2, to be executed in the next reporting period, will conclude theorbit insertion phase.
Published: 5 May 2006
Report for Period 7 April - 28 April 2006The reporting period covers three weeks of cruise, in which the spacecraft was going through the first solar conjunction of the mission. The level of activities was kept minimal to cope with the expected significant degradation of the TM/TC links as the Spacecraft-Earth-Sun angle went below 5 degrees and...
Published: 2 May 2006
Report for period 21 April to 27 April 2006In the reporting period two apocentre lowering manoeuvres have been executed as part of the orbit insertion phase, which is proceeding as scheduled. These manoeuvres have been interleaved with payload commissioning activities involving most of the instruments.
Published: 2 May 2006
Report for period 14 April - 20 April 2006The 9-days capture orbit has been successfully completed with the first of five Apocentre Lowering Manoeuvres on DoY 110 at about 08:00 UTC (200 ms-1). This manoeuvre has set the spacecraft onto an orbit with a period of about 40 hours and an apocenter altitude of 99 000 km.
Published: 24 April 2006
Report for period 20 March to 16 April 2006SMART-1 operations have been nominal during this period. The only noticeable event was another double EDAC error on 3 April 2006. The error occurred in page 0 causing the invalidation of the Timetag Queue. Fortunately the FD vector had a validity of about 3 hours at the time of occurrence and it...
Published: 20 April 2006
Report for period 10 March - 7 April 2006The reporting period covers four weeks of cruise, in which the spacecraft was gradually entering the first solar conjunction of the mission. At the end of the reporting period the angular separation from the Sun was down to 1.04°.
Published: 19 April 2006
Report for period 7 April to 13 April 2006After 5 months of cruise phase Venus Express has been inserted into a Venus orbit on 11 April (DoY 101) at about 08:00 UTC with a successful burn of its Main Engine which has slowed down the spacecraft such that it could be captured by the gravity of the planet.
Published: 19 April 2006
Report for period 31 March to 06 April 2006 The Venus approach phase is proceeding according to plan with all activities conducted successfully. The last week has been dedicated to the spacecraft preparation for the capture burn to take place on 11 April. The fuel and oxidiser tanks have been pressurised and the helium tank is being warmed-up...
Published: 7 April 2006
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