ESA Science & Technology - Status Report Archive
Status report archive
Status report archive
Now in interplanetary cruise more than 20 million kilometers from Earth, the Mars Express spacecraft platform subsystems (thermal, power, attitude and orbit control, on-board data handling) continue to behave in a nominal manner.
Published: 25 August 2003
Spacecraft platform subsystems (thermal, power, attitude and orbit control, on-board data handling) behave in a nominal manner. Spacecraft commissioning will continue into the end of July. Payload commissioning, including the Beagle-2 lander checkout, will be completed by mid-July.
Published: 8 July 2003
All operations planned for the Launch and Early Operations Phase (LEOP) have been completed and the near-Earth verification phase has commenced as planned. All operations are now being conducted via the high gain antenna, which is the nominal configuration.
Published: 24 June 2003
INTEGRAL routine operations are proceeding smoothly with no loss of redundancy or majorconcerns. The Performance Verification phase was successfully completed on 17 December2002, except for the Crab Nebula 'standard candle' calibration target that could not beobserved before 2003 February due to solar aspect angle constraints. While the...
Published: 18 April 2003
XMM-Newton operations continue to run smoothly. Radiation levels around the belts andduring the remainder of the orbit have started to increase again. This is a well-known seasonaleffect. The recent orbit maintenance manoeuvre and the spring 2003 eclipse season went bywithout any problems.
Published: 18 April 2003
Cassini-Huygens is performing nominally. NASA/JPL testing of the Orbiter flight softwareupdates, as required for the Saturn Orbit Insertion, the Huygens Mission and the Saturn tour,is progressing nominally.
Published: 18 April 2003
The spacecraft status is nominal.On 25 February 2003 a regular station keeping and momentum management manoeuvre wasperformed. The amount of fuel used was 0.54 kg which leaves about 120 kg. Due to changedthermal settings, the thrusting was slightly unbalanced. This will be corrected in the nextmanoeuver, which is planned for mid June 2003. In...
Published: 18 April 2003
The ISO Data Centre Active Archive Phase activities continue to run smoothly. On average,each month in 2003 has seen 60 users downloading some 13% of the archive, this is theequivalent of the full scientific content is retrieved every 8 months by the community.Requirements have been consolidated for a new version of the ISO Data Archive...
Published: 18 April 2003
The mission is progressing nominally, with spacecraft and all scientific instruments in goodhealth. Unusually, three Anomaly Reports (ULY056, 57, and 58) were issued during thereporting period. The first concerned a command error caused by an incorrect bit-rateselection, while the second anomaly was the result of ground segment problems. The...
Published: 18 April 2003
The spacecraft are working nominally and the instruments are returning data as expected bythe Master Science Plan. The data return is on average 99.8 % since February 2003 and 99.4% since September 2002. The VILSPA-1 and Maspalomas ground stations are operatingnominally. Telemetry fluctuations are seen sporadically but the data return is not...
Published: 18 April 2003
The Hubble Space Telescope and its suite of new and refurbished Instruments continue toperform very well. However, the loss of the shuttle Columbia is calling into question NASA'sschedule to service the HST. The next mission is still planned for November 2004, but noreliable dates will be known for some time.
Published: 18 April 2003
The spacecraft status is nominal.On 10 October 2002 a regular station keeping and momentum management manoeuvre wasperformed. Fuel used: 0.22 kg. Remaining fuel: 120 kg. The next manoeuvre is planned for 19February 2003. To improve the monitoring of the propulsion branch pressures, both sides Aand B are now powered ON. In absence of any proton...
Published: 6 February 2003
The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft is performing nominally. Saturn Orbit Insertion is planned totake place on 1 July 2004, Probe release on 25 December 2004 and Probe entry on 14 January2005.
Published: 3 February 2003
Integral was launched on 2002 October 17 from Baikonur Cosmodrome. The first three stagesof the Proton rocket placed Integral into a low-Earth orbit and 50 minutes later the fourthstage placed Integral into the correct transfer orbit. A few days later, using its own fuel, fourperigee raise burns and one apogee adjust manoeuvre placed Integral...
Published: 3 February 2003
The spacecraft are working nominally and the instruments are returning data as expected bythe Master Science Plan. Since 15 Sept 2002 the Maspalomas station has been used to returndata over 100% of the orbit. However the full testing of Maspalomas and training ofpersonnel could not be completed before the switch-over from Redu and therefore...
Published: 3 February 2003
XMM-Newton operations continue to run smoothly. The launch of Integral had almost noimpact on XMM-Newton operations. The passage through the Leonids, as well as the autumneclipse season, went by without any problems. The main upcoming events are an orbitmaintenance manoeuvre (Feb-2003) and the spring eclipse season (Mar/Apr-2003).
Published: 3 February 2003
The ISO Data Centre Active Archive Phase activities continue to run smoothly.
Published: 3 February 2003
The Hubble Space Telescope continues to perform very well. In particular, the new CameraACS and the "cryocooled" Spectrograph NICMOS, are providing new exciting scientificresults.
Published: 3 February 2003
The mission, now in its 13 th year of science operations, is progressing nominally, withspacecraft and all scientific instruments in good health. One Anomaly Report (ULY055"Early termination of open-loop slew") was issued during the reporting period. Themanoeuvre in question was the last in a series of four to calibrate the Upper Axial...
Published: 3 February 2003
The 10th Huygens Probe Checkout was executed as planned on 16 September 2002. The probe equipment was switched on at 16:09 UTC by a preprogrammed sequence which has been uploaded on Cassini Computer more than a week ago. The sequence lasted about 6 hours, the longest checkout ever performed.
Published: 16 September 2002
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