Jan. 6, 2000
Status, 6 January 2000, 5:00 PST The Terra High Gain Antenna (HGA) remains turned off due to concerns about the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA). The earliest that the HGA will be turned back on is Thursday, 13 January. A software patch is being developed to operationally cycle the HGA off during passages through the SAA. This does not mean that we will lose science data during this period since the data are normally stored on the spacecraft solid-state recorder for later transmission at the next TDRSS communications satellite contacts. Analysis of the impact, if any, of this operating scenario on our overall science data coverage has not yet been performed. The 11-second-duration engineering test burn of the spacecraft propulsion system, originally scheduled for today, has been postponed to Monday, 10 January. The first full burn to raise the orbit altitude is scheduled for January 11 or 12, with the second, third, and fourth full burns planned for January 18, 21, and 23. The 16 kilobit-per-second (kbps) capability of the omnidirectional antenna will be used for spacecraft contacts during the burn maneuvers (at least until the HGA is back on). Detailed MISR instrument and camera telemetry is being obtained during 16 kbps contacts with Terra through the omni antenna, and all readings continue to look very good. The optical bench and focal planes are running at about 25 degrees Centigrade. This is providing a good bake-out of contaminants. 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