[meteorite-list] [Fwd: [alllpl] MESSENGER Post Flyby Assessment]

From: lebofsky at lpl.arizona.edu <lebofsky_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:40:35 -0700 (MST)
Message-ID: <2714.71.226.60.25.1200440435.squirrel_at_timber.lpl.arizona.edu>

Hi All:

In case your are interested in images from MESSENGER, it appears that the
lines are busy, so the spacecraft download is delayed a little.

Larry

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: [alllpl] MESSENGER Post Flyby Assessment
From: "Mary Guerrieri" <mary at lpl.arizona.edu>
Date: Tue, January 15, 2008 1:55 pm
To: alllpl at lpl.arizona.edu
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

 From Bill Boynton:

----------- Forwarded message ----------

Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 14:44:49 -0500
From: "Finnegan, Eric J." <Eric.Finnegan at jhuapl.edu>
Subject: MESSENGER Post Flyby Assessment

At 16:30 UTC (11:30a.m. EST) telemetry from the spacecraft was received
by flight controllers on the ground. All spacecraft subsystems and
instruments are reporting nominal operations, indicating that the
command sequence executed as expected for the last 55 hours. At receipt
of telemetry, the MP was reporting that 1213 images were recorded and
the Solid State Recorder was approximately 47% full (approximately
500Mbytes), all as expected and within predictions for the flyby data
collection.

Unfortunately, other spacecraft that share the Deep Space Network (DSN),
have declared spacecraft emergencies within minutes of data receipt,
thus pulling much of the post flyby data downlink support that was
planned. This will delay the previous expectations for data downlink
times on the ground. At present, MESSENGER operations staff has
negotiated with the DSN to recover low rate contact with the spacecraft
from now till 2320 UTC (6:20 p.m.). At this time, contact with the 70m
antenna in Canberra Australia will resume at a data rate of 104kbit per
second (the highest data rate possible for the spacecraft). Operations
has further negotiating extending this contact period to 0930 UTC
(4:30a.m. on Wednesday Jan. 15th), this increase should allow for the
large majority of the science data stored to be down linked by the end
of this track.

With these changes in the downlink schedule, it is expected that the
first raw data and images of the undiscovered portion of the planet will
be available in the Mission Operations Center late this evening or first
thing Wednesday morning. Although this is an inconvenience to our
exploration efforts, our thoughts and support should be with these other
missions, now experiencing difficulty, that share in the exploration of
our solar system.

Sincerely,

Eric J. Finnegan
MESSENGER Mission System Engineer
Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory
Desk:....240-228-1712
Mobile:..443-827-2550
Email:...Eric.Finnegan at jhuapl.edu
Received on Tue 15 Jan 2008 06:40:35 PM PST