ESA Venus Express Status Report: Report for period 9 November 15:30 – 10 November 15:30 UTC

Ongoing LEOP Activities

Both the Venus Express spacecraft and ground segment continue to perform excellently. The highlight of this period was the successful planning and testing of the Trajectory Correction Manoeuvre (TCM-0).

The Venus Express Launch and Early Orbit (LEOP) operations continue to run very smoothly with good support from the ESA and NASA DSN ground stations.

Pass 2 Activities

Pass 2 activities encompassed loading of the On-Board Control Procedures (OBCPs), loading of the Service 12 and the dump of the Safe Guard Memory (SGM). The planned Reaction Wheels off-loading was not required. All foreseen Pass 2 activities were already completed about two hours after hand-over from Team A to Team B. The remainder pass activities were quiescent, in view of a well performing spacecraft and ground segment.

Pass 3 Activities

Activities started with the preparation for testing the Trajectory Correction Manoeuvre (TCM-0). Given the slight over-performance from Soyuz-Fregat, the TCM-0 was conducted in the direction of Earth for minimal fuel use.

The slew to position was enabled at 05:20 UCT, started 05:43 UCT and was completed 06:13 UCT.

Subsequently, TCM-0 started at 06:38:52 UCT with a manoeuvre duration of 48 sec and a magnitude of 0.5 m/sec. Post manoeuvre assessment, based on Doppler data, indicated that the manoeuvre duration was about 1 sec less than commanded and revealed a negligible error in performance.

By 07:33 UCT the spacecraft had been slewed back to the starting attitude. This completed the foreseen activities for pass 3.