[meteorite-list] CONTOUR Update - August 18, 2002

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:52:18 2004
Message-ID: <200208191507.IAA12010_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.contour2002.org/news.php?id=20

CONTOUR Mission Status Report
August 18, 2002 -- 2:00 p.m. (EDT)

Current Operations: Radar and Radio Checks

The effort to locate and contact the CONTOUR spacecraft - through
telescope, radar and radio checks - continues. Aided by an
Aug. 16 telescope image from the Spacewatch Project showing two
objects along a path close to CONTOUR's predicted trajectory,
mission operators "know where to look now," says Dr. Robert
Farquhar, CONTOUR mission director from the Johns Hopkins
University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Beginning Monday, Aug. 19, the team plans to check if CONTOUR
carries out a timed command to cycle and attempt to transmit
through different antennas. The sequence is timed to start
96 hours after CONTOUR receives its last command - meaning it
could start as early as 4:09 a.m. (EDT) or as late as 10:09 p.m.
Monday - and would last several hours.

"We aren't sure that the spacecraft is completely gone, and
that"s what we're going to be working on over the next several
days," Farquhar says.
Received on Mon 19 Aug 2002 11:07:58 AM PDT