Mars Express Commissioning Almost Complete

Overall Mission Status

Since the last status report, the overall operational performance of the spacecraft and payload continued to be satisfactory. Some temporary problems were encountered with the Solid State Mass Memory (SSMM), which are currently under investigation.

Remaining payload-commissioning activities are being performed until mid-April. The MARSIS radar will be deployed on 20 April and subsequently the spacecraft will be fully commissioned.

Spacecraft resources, in particular power usage, are still constrained as Mars Express has encountered the first eclipse season, although the duration of eclipses per orbit is now slowly decreasing every day.

Scientific Payload Status

The status and performance of the orbiter payload in Mars orbit is excellent, with new high-resolution stereo and colour images and high-resolution spectral measurements of the planet being acquired, and further radio science data collected.

The orbit of the Mars Express spacecraft continues to be very stable. Imaging instruments and spectrometers have begun global coverage science data acquisition. In particular, HRSC and OMEGA have started to perform mosaic and map construction.