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No. 169 - Mission Update

No. 169 - Mission Update

Report for Period 1 February to 7 February 2009The Venus Express spacecraft and payload performed nominally during this week, with VIRTIS continued being operated in visual channels only.
Due to a failure on Sunday 1 February of the drivers that move the antenna at the Cebreros ground station, the deep space antenna was not available for communications until it was put back in operations on Wednesday 4 February. During this period the data retrieval from Venus Express was performed with three other ground stations (New Norcia and the NASA Deep Space stations DSS-55 and DSS-63) with no loss of science data.

Preparations for the Reaction Control Subsystem B commissioning of next week also took place during the reporting period.

The table below shows a chronology of the main activities:

MET (Day) Date DOY Main Activity
1181 01/02/09 032

Cebreros communications interrupted by snow and later by servo driver failure. Pass cancelled.

1182 02/02/09 033

New Norcia and DSS-55 communications passes. Cebreros unavailable

1183 03/02/09 034

New Norcia and DSS-63 communications passes. Cebreros unavailable

1184 04/02/09 035

Communications pass over Cebreros

1185 05/02/09 036

Communications pass over Cebreros

1186 06/02/09 037

Communications pass over Cebreros

1187 07/02/09 038

Communications pass over Cebreros

At the end of the last Cebreros pass in the reporting period (DOY 038) Venus Express was orbiting Venus at 73.6 million km from the Earth. The one-way signal travel time was 254.4 seconds.

Payload Activities

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

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

PFS
The instrument was not operated during the reporting period.

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

VeRA
No measurements were taken during the reporting period.

VIRTIS
VIRTIS was operated in the visual channels only.

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

Future Milestones

  • Commissioning of the Reaction Control Subsystem B on 12 February 2009.
  • Preparation for next gravity observation campaign with the Canberra ground station CAN43 on 15 April 2009.
  • Battery Deep Discharge Test is planned for 22 April 2009.
  • Start of next (outbound) quadrature phase on 29 May 2009.
  • Swap of high gain antenna (HGA) from HGA2 to HGA1 on 8 June 2009.

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This report is based on the ESOC mission operations report, MOR #169. Please see the copyright section of the legal disclaimer (bottom of this page) for terms of use.

Last Update: 1 September 2019
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19-Apr-2024 10:13 UT

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