Oo - I had no idea you had written that Jason - nice words

Doug

GET IN

Well - until AOS we're not going to know are we? The burn finished 'in the blind' from our perspsective. It might have been performing slightly under, but the spacecraft was counting delta-V, not seconds, so it should have just burnt 1% longer.

Doug

Google's a powerfull little sod sometimes.

Doug

Feel free to join the rave

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...view=getnewpost

There's a big crowd..well.....3 of us

Doug

Nightmare - now I'm going to have to bug people for the new papers instead.

Grrr

Doug

Press conf is on now - they did no TCM5

Doug

Z = GMT / UT, P = Pacific
Future, Unconfirmed, Confirmed

NASA TV coverage starts at 2030Z / 1230P

TCM5 was not required.
2049Z / 1249P - Tank Pressurize - nominal pressure reported (@2053Z)
2103Z / 1303P - Switch to LGA ( 2 way doppler @ 2104Z, Lock at 160bps :2105Z)
2107Z / 1307P - Turn to Burn attitude (start of turn confirmed via doppler & telem @2110Z - Slew finished @2119Z via ACS)
2124Z / 1324P - Start of MOI Burn (confirmed via Doppler @2123Z )
(tank pressure about 3psi below predicts but within margins @2131Z )
(307m/sec accumulated delta @2135Z)
(401m/sec accumulated delta @2139Z)
(588m/sec accumualted delta @2144Z)
(telem. indicated eclipse entry @2146Z)
2146Z / 1346P - Loss of signal ( confirmed on doppler @2147Z- actual time 21:46:23Z)
2151Z / 1351P - Nominal End of Burn
2216Z / 1416P - Nominal AOS - (signal aquired - 1 way doppler @2116Z - 22:16:08 actual time)
(2 way doppler @2223Z)
2230Z / 1430p - 1641m/s burn indicated by telementry.

MRO is now orbiting the planet Mars

Status check at 2245Z
Flight Software - Burn done at 20% Utilisation
Prop Nominal
ACS, Earth point on reaction wheels, Star tracker aquisition ( 8 stars ), Burn time 1641 seconds vs 1606 expected. 1000.48 m/s compared to 1000.36m/s expected.
Thermal - all temps nominal. A few alarms due to soak back from the rcs thrusters.
EPS - Nomincal, trickle charging batts ( 110% state of charge ) - 870 Watts being used, 1650 Watts available from arrays.
Telecom - Nominal, on primary equipment, uplink and downlink signals as expected, already got a command in.
Fault Prot - Quicklook, no abnormal responses to the burn, out of go-fast mode.
Nominal termination to the MOI nominal block.






http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/realtime/mro-doppler_lg.html
Interesting Pre MOI PDF Presentation
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codeq/smadir/hq06/landano.pdf



11th March 0030 Press Conf Update

Usual superlatives from senior management that don't tell us anything.

Jim Graff acknowledged help from NOAA w.r.t. Solar Weather, and the DSN's outstanding job.
Howard Eisan : MRO is safe, stable, on earth point, transmitting at 550kbps. We've earned the 'RO' of MRO. Dippled less than 10% into the batteries, commanded velocity change 2237.6 mph, overshot by 0.4mph, during the burn we underperformed by 2%, burned by 33 seconds longer to make up the difference. First hr of Nav data - orbit 35.5 hrs (predict 35.6) 264 x 28,000 mile orbit.
Rich Zurek : 2 of our 8 investigations were ones lost with MCO, one of those was also lost with Mars Observer. This completes replacement of all the Mars Observer instrumentation. We're going to knock your socks off - it's a good day.

Sally from TPS : Break for 2 weeks, what are you going to be doing (are you going to be celebrating for two weeks) - JG - stand down for w'end for a rest. Then prepare for aerobraking. ORT for Aerobraking, reconfig spacecraft for aerobraking, and some software patches to send up (9 uploaded to date, a few more to go). One other thing - we will take some early images - engineering images not science quality, make sure they work properly, processing that data on the ground to make sure the processing centres can extract the images from the data.

Sally asked when that science will start. RZ mentioned the use of aerobraking (lowest altitude is 60 miles) to understand structure of atmosphere. Sally asked if aerobraking is hard every orbit. RZ said that most of the closest approaches will be over the south pole. They dont expect big dust storms.

That's all the questions- again, kudos to Sally for asking them something. Unarguably the most important moment in Mars exploration since MER landing and potentially more important than anything between then and MSL landing scientifically, and in terms of infrastructure on orbit - $700M's worth of project - and that's three conferences where Sally was almost the only person to ask any questions. Either JPL PAO has furning the media with every single piece of information they could want before the event, or the media seem to be barely taking note of the mission because it's not as sexy as a landing ( there were plenty of spare seats in the V.K. auditorium, at Spirit's landing conf, you couldnt swing a cat in there ). Under-representation of mission rant over.

Doug

I've tried to get some sort of clever browser thing going, but failed, as backup, some of you may remember the old #space chat room that was at


irc://chat.freenode.net/#space

I've found it a bit...umm....noisey at times. Sometimes great, sometimes a bit "WHY DON'T TEY USE TEH COLOR CAMERA5" if you get my drift.


So - I'll only announce it here - try irc://chat.freenode.net/#umsf tonight, I'll try and stay in there from about 1900, and us lot can have a chinwag about the MOI event as it happens

I use www.mirc.com to get 'in', but other irc clients are around - http://www.irchelp.org/ might help.

In the future - I want to have a java based IRC client within the UMSF domain so that we can just go to a page, put in a name, and be chatting - but for now, hopefully a couple of you will make it in there tonight.

Doug

The info is out there - we just need someone to make it into a 3d friendly format, and then the visualisations will come out like a fire hose

Doug

You mentioned the same idea with another spacecraft at some point - but it would be much MUCH easier just to mount a mission to go and collect samples from a comet (i.e. Stardust) than attempt to rendezvous with, encapsulate, and bring home an entire spacecraft. that was never designed to collect samples and is likely to show damage, but certainly not an aerogel like capture of samples.

For all we know, leaking hydrazine might have put Giotto into a massive spin. It might have broken apart, or it might be in a steady state of spin still.

It's a cute idea - bringing these things home - but ultimately pointless and certainly an enormous waste of a very limited budget.

Doug

Here's a Navcam wedge from Spirit Sol 12, you can even see individual cells on the array in the foreground

Doug

Given that Spirit is on 360 Whrs - it can't drive very quickly, it doesnt have the power to cover a lot of ground in a single Sol.

Doug

And to think - I was about to go to bed.



I tried
http://anserver1.eprsl.wustl.edu/navigator...FF40AJP1745L0M1
http://anserver1.eprsl.wustl.edu/navigator...SF1129P1939L0M1
http://anserver1.eprsl.wustl.edu/navigator...FF0215P1320L0M1

All generated VRML files between 10 and 25 MB, 3ds Max is notorious at being crap at importing VRML, so I used a standalone VRML viewer to have a look at the clouds....

1 is Spirit look at Humphrey, 2 is Navcam wedge that includes the heatshield impact for Oppy, and 3 is Oppy RHAZ egress (that's the lander behind it)

Doug

Just got word from JB

"Spirit is down to about 360-370 Whr and Opportunity is down to about
540-55 Whr"

Doug

I'm not sure of the exact figure - but the post MOI orbit is already very elliptical - I can imagine that it would only have to be a a little shy of the required Delta V to not make an orbit at all

Doug

Well - using Orbiter with a 400km MOI burn aim point - and this is all very rough

The trajectory switched from a flyby to an actual orbit after 26 mintues of Burn - so the bit of burn after LOS, is arguably the most critical

I think the time for reaquisition should be the big marker - I know they say it'll take half an hour of tracking to get a prelim. orbit for the spacecraft, but I'd have thought the actual time of reaquisition would probably be the giveaway as well.

Doug

I might mention this during the next Pancam update - as I'm hoping to get one done before then

Doug

blah blah blah biggest blah blah blah more than every previous blah blah blah blah technolgoically advanced blah blah

Expended only 10kg of fuel instead of the budgetted 35kg with TCM's

Op Nav Camera (2.8kg) a single image from it - showing Deimos against background stars ( taken 1 Million KM from Mars ) - refine position down to about 1km accuracy.

After MOI - a two week break before Aerobraking. More than 500 aerobraking passes.

Drag of aerobraking will be used to calculate air density (60 - 120 miles) and passes will slowly move toward the south pole during the aerobraking manouver. Hope to investigate density waves in the atmosphere.

SHARAD doesnt get deployed until after aerobraking.

Approx 1% of the planet to be covered by HiRISE.

Dan McCleese was on - I could actually sense his crossed fingers from here ( it's the third time he's flown this instrument - the previous two being Observer and Climate Orbiter ) Planetary Radio covered MCS very well - http://www.planetary.org/radio/show/00000166/ He showed a nice dust abundance map made by TES that animates over 6 earth years.

Sally from TPS asked them how they were feeling - concerned but confident was the general theme, the spacecraft will double in speed between now and MOI. Sally followed up asking about the 10x more data than all previous mars missions factoid - One image from HiRISE can be 28 Gbits. That's more data than MER in the primary misison.

Another Q - why are we so fascinated by Mars.

1) Mars is the most earth like, the question of life on mars
2) We've seen it up close, we've seen things we don't think were made today, implying a wetter past. The idea of climate change is important.
3) Mars is a place, it's a destination, you can put humans there.

Sally then followed up asking if we could have weather forcasts for Mars. Dan answered - with the dust and cold, if you're on the surface you'll really care if it's going to get cold. There are things that can get you. MCS offers a beginning to the understanding of the weather system. Taking earth like weather models - and changing them to work with Mars data. This understanding could feed forward to aerocapture in the future.

Kudos for Sally for asking a question - it looked like there were going to be no questions at all at one point!!

And that was it - next one is 9am Pacific ( 1700 UT ) on Friday, with coverage started at 1230 Pacific ( 2030UT )

Doug

It took a few weeks I think.

Doug

I have some footage from the 'Eyes on Mars' DVD of MER testing, and they're very very quiet actually. Nothing I could really hear - apart from the bang of pyro's.

Doug

There's a conf at 1800 UT tonight, I'll listen in and see if anything's mentioned.

Doug

Or simply have it say "at this range, 1 pixel = X cm" ?

Doug

No - that's real - we saw the same 'ripple' pattern up close some time ago

http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_ins.../el_dorado.html

Doug