Feb. 22, 2000
Status 22 February 2000 The orbit adjustment burns for Terra have been proceeding well. On February 10, when the ascent sequence began, the spacecraft's minimum altitude above the Earth was 660 kilometers. As of February 20, this had been raised to 690 kilometers. Based on the actual performance of the spacecraft's thrusters, the timing and duration of the remaining two burns have been modified. Today's successful burn at 10:00 AM PST was of 280-seconds duration, somewhat shorter and earlier than originally planned. The final ascent burn has been moved earlier by one day, to 1:10 PM PST Wednesday, February 23, and is scheduled to last for 110 seconds. There is some chance that a short burn will be necessary to "trim" the orbit. Whether this burn is required will be decided by Wednesday evening, and if needed, will take place Thursday. In that case MISR will proceed as scheduled to open its cover on Friday, February 25. However, in light of the possibility that the trim burn may not be needed, we are pursuing the option of opening the cover on Thursday. You can see earlier status reports by checking the "News" link of the MISR web site at
http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov.
David Diner