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No. 49 - Conjunction Period Planning Completed

No. 49 - Conjunction Period Planning Completed

Report for Period 8 October to 14 October 2006The reporting period contained a spacecraft hardware safe mode which occurred on DoY 282 04:20 UT.

The outage has caused the following impact at mission level:

  • science operations planned between 282.04.20 and 282.16.44 were lost
  • USO switched OFF for about 7 hours
  • VIRTIS operations were suspended from safe mode onward

The ground segment performance has been nominal throughout the reporting period.

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

MET (Day) Date DOY VPER# Main Activity
334 08/10/06 281 170 Routine science operations
335 09/10/06 282 171 Recovery after Safe Mode #5
336 10/10/06 283 172 Update of TM bit rate to 22853bps
337 11/10/06 284 173 Partial dump of PM3 RAM, ACM B switched on and period of generation of YAC00133 updated to 16 seconds
338 12/10/06 285 174 LFLV commanded to close
339 13/10/06 286 175

Full dump of PM3 RAM,
Switch off of PM3 and PM 4 Uplink of command for the conjunction period

340 14/10/06 287 176 Routine science operations

At the end of the last Cebreros pass in the reporting period (DOY 287, 16:00z) Venus Express was orbiting Venus at 256 million km from the Earth. The one-way signal travel time was 855 seconds.

Science Update

The following set of images has been released since the previous status report.

20 October 2006
VIRTIS - Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer

Date: 22 July 2006
Description: Composite of three false-colour images of Venus's night side at 1.7 μm, taken 30 minutes apart. Bright regions correspond to less cloud cover resulting in more radiation from lower altitudes to pass through.

Date: 29 July 2006
Description: Negative image of a VIRTIS observation of the Venus night side at 2.3 μm. By taking the negative image, bright regions now represent the areas of more cloud cover.

Payload Activities

ASPERA
The instrument is regularly operated as part of the routine plan.

MAG
The instrument is regularly operated as part of the routine plan.

PFS
This instrument remained inactive during the reporting period.

SPICAV
The instrument is regularly operated as part of the routine plan.

VeRA
The USO is nominally powered but muted. Solar Corona observations were performed on 2006-281, 2006-283, 2006-285 and 2006-287.

VIRTIS
Following safe mode #5, VIRTIS operations were suspended.

VMC
The instrument is regularly operated as part of the routine plan.

Mission Planning

Short Term Planning
Operations of STP23 have been completed successfully. The planning of the conjunction period was successfully completed.

Future Milestones

Science operations will be suspended and all payloads will be switched off by 2006-288. The platform will be configured for conjunction by 2006-289.

An TCM will be performed on 2006-289 to correct the orbit changes caused by safe mode #5.

Last Update: 1 September 2019
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20-Apr-2024 11:38 UT

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