Mars Global Surveyor Status Report 12-15-1999
Wednesday, December 15, 1999 (DOY 342/19:00:00 to DOY 349/19:00:00 UTC)
Launch / Days since Launch = Nov 7, 1996 / 1134 days
Start of Mapping / Days since Start of Mapping = April 1, 1999 / 258 days
Total Mapping Orbits = 3449
Total Orbits = 5131
Recent Events:
The mm009 sequence continues executing nominally the daily science record
and playback events. The mm009 sequence will run through Wednesday December
15, at which point the mm010 sequence will take over. Last week, a change
request was approved for Mars Global Surveyor to perform special targeted
scans in order to obtain high-resolution camera images of the Mars Polar
Lander (MPL) landing site. The mz030
mini-sequence will contain 10 imaging scans through December 19, with two to
three imaging opportunities per day. The first of these imaging scans will
be performed on Thursday December 16 at 13:38 UTC. Additional imaging will
be performed next week through December 24. It is hoped that we will have
successfully imaged most of the one-sigma landing ellipse by the end of this
campaign. After the holidays, we will make a decision whether to continue
these imaging scans in an attempt to fill in the entire three-sigma landing
ellipse.
High Gain Antenna (HGA) Anomaly:
The HGA inner gimbal angle continues to decrease and is currently at 60.7
degrees. The inner gimbal angle will continue decreasing, reaching the
location of the gimbal obstruction at 41.5 deg in early February. Over the
last week, due to efforts to support imaging of the MPL landing site, work
has been suspended on the new beta supplement mapping implementation. It is
anticipated that this work will pick up again next week.
Spacecraft Health:
All subsystems are reporting nominal health.
Uplinks:
There have been 21 uplinks to the spacecraft during the last week, including
new star catalogs and ephemeris files and the mm010 sequence. Total command
files radiated to the spacecraft since launch is 4224.
Upcoming Events:
1) Final preparations of the mz030 mini-sequence to perform the MPL landing
site imaging. Sequence is scheduled for uplink late Wednesday Dec 15, with
the first image period on Dec 16 at 13:38:40 UTC.
