No. 47 - Ongoing Lunar Operations
The Integral/XMM transponder has been used to carry out tone ranging radio frequency compatibility tests aiming at two SMART-1 tracking campaigns for the cross support with the Chinese CLTC and the Indian ISRO during 2006.
Future Activities
Future activities are focused on the following:
- End of mission preparation and impact on the Moon selection
- Finalisation of the tone ranging compatibility tests and validation using ESA stations
Orbital Information
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SMART-1 OD396 Close to Apolune 1790 Elements WRT Moon and its equator of date | |
| Pericentre Distance (km) | 2380.022541 |
| Apocentre Distance (km) | 4456.635279 |
| Semi Major Axis (km) | 3418.328910 |
| Eccentricity | 0.303747 |
| Inclination (°) | 90.116350 |
| Ascending Node (°) | 238.470099 |
| Argument of Pericentre (°) | 261.884063 |
| True Anomaly (°) | 179.999996 |
| Osculating Orbital Period (h) | 4.981682 |
The changes since apolune 1756 are as follows:
- semi-major axis +0.5 km
- perilune height +2.8 km
- apolune height -1.8 km
- orbital period +0.1 min
AOCS
Startracker Performance
The plot below shows the startracker CCD temperatures for the period covered by this report. As expected CHU2 has suffered from high temperatures during the push-broom operations that ended on 20 December 2005.
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Temperature drop in startracker unit 2 as push-broom operations finish |
Electric Propulsion, Power and Thermal
Power
The Power Subsystem has performed very well during the reporting period. The last eclipse was a moon penumbra from 11:48:28 to 11:46:16 UTC on 24 December 2005, with the batteries performing nominally.
The eclipse season is scheduled to start again on 15 March 2006 at 00:15:15 UTC, with an earth penumbra of a duration of 01:17:41 hours.
Electric Propulsion
EP remained off after ending the re-boost phase.
Thermal
The Thermal Subsystem has performed very well during the reporting period. The last Push-Broom manoeuvre was on 19 December 2005 from 17:41:07 to 18:27:07, with the thermal mode High to behave as Low to keep the temperatures of the +Y/-Y panels lower to avoid as much as possible start tracker invalidations.
The next Push-Broom period is scheduled to start again around April 2006, when the sun incidence on the +Y/-Y panels during Push-Broom is bellow 30 degrees. This Push-Broom period is planned to be about 3 months long, as was the last one.