MRO MOI Events Timeline, Time Zone Friendly Options

[djellison]

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

Attached File(s)

 doppler_1.mov ( 119.34K ) Number of downloads: 382

 

[The Messenger]

The 2% lag in performance - Any clues as to why? TCM-2 was much more precise, or was there a performance correction during the burn as well?
During the NASA TV coverage, I believe I heard something about chamber pressures being slightly low, which was not a complete surprise since certain temperatures were also slightly low.

I didn't hear any explanation or further details about the low temperatures, but somehow I doubt it was 'new physics'. . . .

New physics would not seem to be necessary...but they cannot be eliminated, either

Another aside, there have been new developments in hydrogen containment vessels compatible with the grueling temperature swings of solar space. Espect to see these leak-proof containers, and more dependance upon hydrogen fuels and propulsion systems in interplanetary space flight in the future.

[RNeuhaus]

Yes; I think Rodolfo has missed the four Soviet vehicles placed in orbit around Mars, though whether they still are is another issue.

Bob Shaw

Thanks to ljk4-1 and Bob. I have already checked about the Soviet's Mars program. Only four Russian cosmos probes are orbiting on Mars: Mars 2, 3, 5 and 6. 4 and 7 have missed and are on the solar orbit.

Rodolfo

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

No, Mars 6 isn't orbiting Mars (and never did; it was a flyby that dropped off a lander). But Phobos 2 IS orbiting Mars (unless it's run into Phobos -- as suggested above -- which seems unlikely to me).

[edstrick]

Mars 2 was in a very very eccentric -- was it 19 days long? -- orbit. It would have been strongly pushed around by tidal effects and plausibly has hit the atmosphere by now.

[tedstryk]

Mars 2 was in a very very eccentric -- was it 19 days long? -- orbit. It would have been strongly pushed around by tidal effects and plausibly has hit the atmosphere by now.

Actually, that was Mars 3. Mars 2 was in a short orbit, but had transmitter problems. And Mars 5 may still be in orbit.

[edstrick]

Yep.. you're right.

[Bubbinski]

Would be nice to have a Mars visualisation thingy that shows the locations of all four orbiters and two rovers.

I wonder if the latest Starry Night software fills this bill, it is advertised as tracking spaceprobes. That would be very nice to have.

[helvick]

I wonder if the latest Starry Night software fills this bill, it is advertised as tracking spaceprobes. That would be very nice to have.

Celestia will do it but you'll have to search the forumsfor some add-ons to get all the current orbiters models and orbits.

[mcaplinger]

Celestia will do it but you'll have to search the forumsfor some add-ons to get all the current orbiters models and orbits.

The thread at http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=2367 goes into a tedious level of detail as to why Celestia orbital elements probably won't be correct for orbiters in low sun-sync orbits. The same is true for Starry Night. There's some hope that Celestia SampledOrbits can be defined that will be right over the time they cover, but there's still work left to do on that.

[Decepticon]

Does JPL take this stray probes into account when putting new probes into orbit?

Or is the risk factor to small to even worry?

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

MUCH too small to worry about. Even in the environment of low Earth orbit -- which is now getting frighteningly crowded -- there have been only 2 or 3 significant collisions with small bits of junk (and a lot of those have been scattered by bursting rocket upper stages, or are drops of solidified metallic coolant from the leaky nuclear reactors on the old Soviet recon satellites -- two things we don't have to worry about in Mars orbit).

[mcaplinger]

Does JPL take this stray probes into account when putting new probes into orbit?

Part of the MRO MOI viewgraph package was a COLA (Collision Avoidance) analysis for Phobos, Deimos, and the currently operating orbiters. We don't really know where the dead ones are, so there is no sensible analysis that can be performed. As Bruce said, the probabilities are low, but for bodies with known ephemerides, the analysis is pretty easy, so it might as well be done.

[Gsnorgathon]

Any chance that MARSIS or SHARAD could be used to locate them?

[Bubbinski]

Isn't Marsis the Mars Express ground pointing radar? Interesting thought....even though the risk is low it would still be a great idea to try to track dead probes and scan the space around Mars. But I wonder how this could be done, do we even have radars on earth powerful enough (Arecibo?) to scan Martian orbital space?

More and more spacecraft will hopefully make it to Mars in the near future....it might be prudent now to start on a more extensive COLA/tracking/space debris reduction program before it becomes an issue. Same with the Moon.

[mcaplinger]

Any chance that MARSIS or SHARAD could be used to locate them?

MARSIS uses wavelengths between 50 and 230 meters; SHARAD around 15 meters. I doubt either could detect an object as small as a spacecraft.