Jan. 30, 2000
Status 30 January 2000 This has been a thrilling and eventful day! MISR's flight software has been loaded successfully, the instrument is in "global" science mode, and lots of nice data are flowing. Opening of the cover is still some weeks away, but we have taken a major step forward. You have probably never tested a new camera by having it take pictures of the inside of your front door in the dark, but according to plan MISR's nine cameras are right now doing exactly that. Today's events began at 10:05 AM PST with the start of the flight software upload. After all segments of the code had been successfully transmitted to the instrument, the computer's memory was read out to verify that the contents were as expected. Then, the command to "jump" to the new software program was issued and MISR entered "engineering" mode, which provides voltage, current, temperature, navigation, and status readouts using the newly activated science data output capability. ("Housekeeping" telemetry from the "low-rate" data bus, which was our only source of data until this point, also continues to be available.) During subsequent contacts with the spacecraft, the command to go to "global" science mode was sent. The nine cameras turned on as programmed, and MISR began sending science data to Terra's solid-state recorder. Additionally, the optical bench thermostat was set to 5 degrees Centigrade, the camera focal planes were set to operate at -5 degrees C, and the "thermo-electric" coolers for the focal planes were all turned on. Engineering telemetry looks great, and shows the instrument responding well. Playback of MISR data from the solid-state recorder and transmission to the ground using the Terra High Gain Antenna began at 1:47 PM PST. By 3:30, the Atmospheric Sciences Data Center in Virginia had received the first set of MISR data and started sending it over a data link to JPL. This triggered an automated processing chain that generates detailed analysis reports of the camera data and exercises parts of our ground data processing software. The first look at the "dark" current data from the cameras indicates that the typical signal levels from all nine cameras are very similar to what we saw during pre-launch testing. 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