NASA Internal Memo: LCROSS has rescinded its Declaration of Spacecraft Emergency

LCROSS team-

Last night we lifted our declaration of Spacecraft Emergency with DSN with concurrence from the Center. We have implemented a number of mitigations to try to assure that we are in a more robust position against propellant lost as we finish the remaining 30-days of the mission.

Our work is of course not done as we continue to navigate our risk for the remainder of the mission, but we need to be aware of other risks which have grown through this process… namely staff fatigue. While our new ConOps plan requires we check S/C health every 9-hours, we are looking into ways to make that monitoring as efficient as possible by setting-up remote access and by seeing if other assets can monitor for our S/C “phone home” if the S/C is in trouble.

As a final thought, I wish to express how impressed I am by this LCROSS team. It’s said that the real salt of a team shows when they are thrown into an adversarial situation – one where they are struggling to make it, and it is there were you see what they are made-of. Well, with what I saw from this team over the past two weeks, everyone knows LCROSS is a formidable team.

To the moon…
-D

Daniel Andrews
Project Manager, LCROSS
NASA, Ames Research Center