ESA SMART-1 Status Report – May 2006

Operations have been proceeding nominally with activity levels well above the originally foreseen load. The AMIE team is providing, on a weekly basis, topical image sequences for publication on the main ESA Web portal.

Activities have centred around the preparation of the end of the mission: it is planned that the SMART-1 spacecraft will impact the lunar surface in the early hours of 3 September. To optimize this impact the apogee height will be increased by a sequence of manoeuvres to be performed in June. An observation campaign has been initiated by the Project Scientist to observe the impact from Earth; this will include observatories in Spain, Chile and the US.

In addition to the SMART-1 operations proper, test campaigns for tracking SMART-1 by CLTC to prepare for Chang’e and ISRO to prepare for Chandrayaan 1 were supported. After the initial tests of the equipment the CLTC tracking campaign was successfully performed at the end of February. The configuration of the equipment used by ISRO showed some incompatibility and could not be validated. This campaign has been put on hold.