[X] My Assistant

[atomoid]

such a quiet mission, finally an update was released today: NASA’s MAVEN Spacecraft Completes First Deep Dip Campaign

and another item i didnt notice previously: NASA’s MAVEN Mission Identifies Links in Chain Leading to Atmospheric Loss


Edit: doh!! wrong thread..

ADMIN: Moved to start a new topic of Orbital Science from the start of the deep dip campaign.

[Hungry4info]

Apparently we almost lost the mission due to an IMU failure.
https://www.space.com/nasa-mars-spacecraft-maven-nearly-lost

[mcaplinger]

Apparently we almost lost the mission due to an IMU failure.

I have no inside knowledge about this, but I suspect that the media reports have been somewhat modulated for dramatic effect.

IMU problems and subsequent use of all-stellar mode is pretty old news. See "Verification of Mars Odyssey All-Stellar Attitude Determination Ten Years After Launch", Gingerich et al, 2015, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7119001 (paywalled, but available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/30...rs_after_launch )

The wrinkle for MAVEN was that they had some failures that required some ground-commanded manipulation of onboard redundancy. On previous missions, the transition to all-stellar could be done in a more leisurely and measured fashion.