[meteorite-list] LADEE Update - October 17, 2013

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 16:11:42 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201310192311.r9JNBgTY009227_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/ladee-status-update-oct-17-2013/

LADEE Status Update
Ames Research Center
Oct. 17, 2013

During the NASA shutdown, the LADEE mission continued to perform its critical
maneuvers and capture into the commissioning orbit around the moon. The
trajectory correction maneuver (TCM-1) was completed on Oct. 1, and set
the spacecraft to rendezvous with the moon on Oct. 6. The Neutral mass
Spectrometer (NMS) cap ejection on Oct. 3 was successful. The first Lunar
Orbit Insertion maneuver (LOI-1) on Oct. 6 was very accurate, and required
no course adjustments afterward. This is impressive performance of the
propulsion system, given the size of the LOI-1 burn. This maneuver put
the spacecraft in a 24-hour elliptical lunar orbit. The LOI-2 maneuver
on Oct. 9 also was very accurate, putting LADEE into a 4-hour elliptic
lunar orbit. The third and final LOI-3 burn occurred on Oct. 12, and put
the spacecraft into the 2-hour commissioning orbit (roughly 235 Km x 250
Km). The LADEE spacecraft commissioning activities are now complete, and
the instrument commissioning activities have begun. The LDEX and UVS aliveness
activities were completed successfully on Oct. 16, with both instrument
covers deployed. These instrument cover deployments were the last remaining
planned critical events for the mission. All critical maneuvers and all
instrument cover deployments are completed at this point. The science
instrument commissioning and lasercom primary experiment will be conducted
through mid-Nov., at which point the spacecraft will start to drop down
to the lower lunar science orbit.

NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley designed, developed, built
and tested the spacecraft and will manage the 100-day science mission.
Ames controls the spacecraft and executes mission operations.
Received on Sat 19 Oct 2013 07:11:42 PM PDT