No. 10 - Passive Cruise Continues
The table below shows a chronology of the main activities in the reporting period:
|
MET (Day) |
Date |
DOY |
Main Activity |
|
59 |
06/01/06 |
006 |
Radio Science Pass |
|
60 |
07/01/06 |
007 |
SC Monitoring |
|
61 |
08/01/06 |
008 |
SC Monitoring |
|
62 |
09/01/06 |
009 |
SC Monitoring |
|
63 |
10/01/06 |
010 |
SC Monitoring |
|
64 |
11/01/06 |
011 |
Skipped |
|
65 |
12/01/06 |
012 |
SC Monitoring |
At the end of the last NNO pass in the reporting period (DOY 013, 06:00) Venus Express was 18.7 million km from the Earth, 128.4 million km from the Sun, and 21.5 million km from Venus. The one-way signal travel time was 62 seconds.
Payload Activities
ASPERA
The instruments has been activated for a passive calibration on DoY 008.
All other instruments remained off during the reporting period.
Future Milestones
Operations with Cebreros will resume on 15 January in preparation of the second payload pointing campaign to be conducted from 16 to 21 January. This will mark the last combined payload operations scenario before arrival at Venus.
In future each instrument will be activated occasionally on a single case basis to conduct either checkout or maintenance activities.
The two weeks after the payload pointing scenarios will be dedicated to in-flight thermal characterisation.