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| No. 40 - Ongoing Lunar Operations |
Overall Status
During the period 17 May to 19 June 2005, SMART-1 activities were focused on three main tasks:
- Continuous Payload activities in Lunar orbit with all instruments performing nominally
- Selection of new optimised moon orbit for the mission extension based on available Xenon.
- Completion of improvements in the mission planning system.
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| Date: 20 Jun 2005 |
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| No. 39 - SMART-1 Ready for Operations Phase |
| Overall Status During the period 25 April to 16 May 2005, SMART-1 activities were focused on two main tasks:
- Operational Orbit Review - ESOC 28 April
- Moon Science Activities
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| Date: 19 May 2005 |
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| No. 38 - SMART-1 experiences two Earth Eclipses |
| Overall Status SMART-1 is approaching the conclusion of its commissioning activities. Sometime in the next few weeks the spacecraft will be handed over to the science teams for full operational activities. |
| Date: 26 Apr 2005 |
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| No. 37 - Start of Moon Eclipse Season |
| Overall Status The issue reported in the previous status report (No. 36) concerning EDAC has been ongoing with another error occurring on 4 April 2005. Following discussions between ground control and industry a new procedure was developed, tested and executed on 7 April 2005. As a result a decision was made to only upload Flight Dynamic profiles and no Payload commands until a memory verification could be carried out. Consequently no payload activities were possible during the second half of the reporting period, running from 28 March to 10 April. |
| Date: 12 Apr 2005 |
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| No. 36 - Ongoing Lunar Commissioning |
| Overall Status
The spacecraft is in good health with all functions working nominally. The only noticeable event was an anomaly with the mass memory caused by a double EDAC (Error Detection and Correction). The spacecraft software responded accordingly and invalidated those errors in memory. Ground operations are investigating the cause of the problem and will seek to recover the data at a later point. |
| Date: 29 Mar 2005 |
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| No. 35 - Final Lunar Orbit & Instrument Lunar Commissioning |
| On 27 February, as planned, SMART-1 entered its final lunar orbit [full details below]. During the transfer trajectory the payload instruments had undergone a commissioning phase to enable observations of the Moon to take place. In order to maximise the results from lunar orbit it is, however, necessary to recalibrate the instruments. This consists of taking images and spectra of particularly well known targets and cross correlating observations between SIR, the IR spectrometer and AMIE, the camera. This procedure takes some time, as it is dependent on both the visibility of the target and the correct illumination conditions. |
| Date: 14 Mar 2005 |
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| No. 34 - SMART-1 Approaching Final Lunar Orbit |
| While approaching its final operational orbit around the Moon, SMART-1 interrupted the Electric Propulsion operations on Monday 10 January 2005. The reason for this delay before reaching the target orbit is to estimate the remaining fuel and plan accurately for a mission extension. |
| Date: 17 Jan 2005 |
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| No. 33 - SMART-1 Closing in on the Moon |
| On 9 December 2004, at 04:09 UTC, SMART-1 started its 12th orbit around the Moon. After the first orbit started on November 15 at 17:47 UTC, the following perilune passages have taken place: |
| Date: 10 Dec 2004 |
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| No. 32 - SMART-1 completes its first orbit around the Moon |
| Today, 19 November 2004, at 10:58 UTC, SMART-1 passed its second perilune and successfully completed its first orbit around the Moon. The first orbit started on 15 November at 17:47 UTC when SMART-1 passed its first perilune. |
| Date: 19 Nov 2004 |
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| No. 31 - SMART-1 from Earth-bound to Moon-bound |
| On 11 November at 10:30 UTC, close to the 331st apogee, SMART-1 will be in the middle of a "weak stability boundary". In this region the spacecraft is neither in an Earth-bound orbit, nor a Moon-bound orbit: it is in no man's land. |
| Date: 10 Nov 2004 |
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| No. 30 - On Course for Lunar Capture |
| On 25 October SMART-1 fired, for the last time, the electric propulsion engine. This small correction manoeuvre of about 4 hours was necessary to correct the slight over-performance of the engine during the last long burn of 100 hours (10-14 October) during the third resonance. |
| Date: 27 Oct 2004 |
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| No. 29 - SMART-1 First Birthday in Space and Second Lunar Resonance |
| On 27 September 2004, SMART-1 celebrated its first birthday in space. After travelling about 78 million kilometres, the spacecraft is in good health with all subsystems functioning as expected. |
| Date: 01 Oct 2004 |
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| No. 29 - First Interference Scenario |
| Report for week 17 to 24 September 2004 In the reporting period the payload commissioning activities continued, with the completion of the OSIRIS functional commissioning, the execution of the first part of the ROSINA functional commissioning (RTOF and DFMS high voltages), the first Interference Scenario and the start of the long Pointing Scenario. |
| Date: 28 Sep 2004 |
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| No. 28 - First Lunar Resonance |
| On 19 August 17:56 UTC, while at apogee, SMART-1 had its first encounter with the Moon. The spacecraft was approximately 197 000 km from the Moon and 230 000 km from Earth. SMART-1 was still completely within the Earth's sphere of influence, due to the much larger mass of the Earth, despite the fact that it was closer to the Moon. However, the gravitational influence of the Moon on the SMART-1 orbit has been large enough to significantly change the orbit (see figure below). |
| Date: 27 Aug 2004 |
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| No. 27 - Making Progress Towards the Moon |
| The spacecraft is now into its 321st orbit, in good status and with all functions performing nominally. The current thrusting strategy is progressing well and one of the longest thrust arcs took place on 9 August at 22:14 for 56.7 hours. The next arc started on 14 August and will last for 39 hours. The thrust strategy has recently been re-optimised in order to take into account the actual engine performance. Long thrust arcs, alternating with short ones, will continue until Moon capture in mid November. |
| Date: 16 Aug 2004 |
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| No. 26 - The Cruise Phase Continues |
| The spacecraft is now flying its 314th orbit, in good status and with all functions performing nominally. The new thrusting strategy is well in progress with thrust arcs around perigee for about one third of every revolution. Presently the thrust arcs last for about 27 hours out of an orbital period of 81 hours. The thrust duration will progressively increase to a longest thrust arc of 41.5 hours starting on 10 August at 12:52, when the orbit period will be about 120 hours (5 days). |
| Date: 15 Jul 2004 |
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| No. 25 - SMART-1 Observes the Earth |
| The spacecraft is now flying its 310th orbit, in good status and with all functions performing nominally. The new thrusting strategy is well in progress with thrust arcs around perigee for about one third of every revolution. Presently the thrust arcs last for about 21 hours out of a 68 hours orbital period. The thrust duration will progressively increase to almost 40 hours by orbit 321 in mid August, by which point the orbital period will be over 120 hours (5 days). |
| Date: 02 Jul 2004 |
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| No. 24 - Cruising beyond 100 000 km from Earth |
| The spacecraft is now flying its 302nd orbit, in good status and with all functions performing nominally. The current thrusting strategy, adopted end of May (see Status Reports #20 and #21), is progressing with thrust arcs around perigee for about one third of every revolution. The thrust arcs duration is for about 18 hours out of an orbital period of 55 hours. The thrust duration will progressively increase to almost 40 hours in orbit 321 in mid-August, by which point the orbital period will exceed 5 days. |
| Date: 11 Jun 2004 |
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| No. 23 - Small Thrust Level Oscillations |
| The spacecraft is now flying its 288th orbit, in good status and with all functions performing nominally. The new thrusting strategy is well in progress with thrust arcs around perigee for about one third of every revolution. Presently the thrust arcs last for about 15 hours of every 42 hour-orbit. The thrust duration will progressively increase to almost 40 hours in orbit 321 in mid August when the orbital period will be more than 5 days. |
| Date: 14 May 2004 |
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| No. 22 - 2000 hours of electric propulsion operations |
| The spacecraft is now in its 278th orbit, in good status and with all functions performing nominally. The new thrusting strategy is well in progress with thrust arcs around perigee for about one third of every revolution. Presently the thrust arcs last for about 13 hours of every 36 hour-orbit. The thrust duration will increase to 18 hours when the orbital period reaches about 50 hours in one and half month. |
| Date: 28 Apr 2004 |
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