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MESSENGER completes first trajectory correction maneuver MESSENGER MISSION CONTROL REPORT Posted: August 26, 2004 MESSENGER completed its first planned maneuver Tuesday at 5:03:35 p.m., EDT, when the thrusters ignited to correct trajectory inaccuracies associated with launch. The spacecraft's four medium (5-pound) hydrazine-propellant thrusters did the brunt of the work with only minor tweaks needed from eight of the 12 small (1-pound) thrusters. It took only 26 seconds for a tracking station in Madrid, Spain, to pick up signals indicating the maneuver had begun. "It was a beautiful maneuver with all maneuver commands executing as they were supposed to," says Mission Operations Manager Mark Holdridge. The 3.6-minute thruster burn cut the spacecraft's velocity by 40 mph (18 meters per second) relative to the sun and slowed the spacecraft to a mere 63,990 mph. MESSENGER is now 4.8 million miles from Earth. On Aug. 27, testing of instruments and subsystems will resume, with the back-up processor (DPU-B) being used to turn on the instruments as a test of its viability. Two more small maneuvers later this year (Sept. 24 and Nov. 19) are needed to precisely target the spacecraft for its August 2005 Earth swingby. MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) is a scientific investigation of the planet Mercury, and the first NASA mission designed to orbit the planet closest to the Sun. Dr. Sean C. Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, leads the mission as principal investigator. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, built and will operate the MESSENGER spacecraft and manages the Discovery-class mission for NASA. |
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NASA's William Readdy, Space Operations associate administrator and Bill Parsons, space shuttle program manager, provide a status report on returning the shuttles to flight in this teleconference with reporters held on the one-year anniversary since the CAIB report was issued. (37min 35sec file)
To mark one year since the publication of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board final report, William Gerstenmaier, International Space Station program
manager, updates the news media on the status of the project. (42min 41sec file)
The Titan 4 rocket emerges from the Solid Motor Assembly and Readiness Facility at Cape Canaveral at about 5:45 a.m. August 25 for rollout to the Complex 40 pad. (3min 58sec file)
Riding on its mobile launching platform, the Titan 4 rocket arrives at the pad just before sunrise. (5min 22sec file)
As dawn breaks over Cape Canaveral, these daylight scenes show the Titan 4 on Complex 40 in preparation for the final Florida launch of this heavy-lift rocket. (2min 11sec file)