Yesterday at 6:16pm, our mid-course correction burn was successfully
completed. The burn was 38 seconds long, changing the speed of the
spacecraft by 1.3 m/s (2.9 MPH)--less than 0.1%! The spacecraft
attitude control system performed beautifully, with minimal start-up
transient (about 0.5 degrees).
After MCC, we turned on the CRaTER and LEND instruments. Performance of
each instrument looks good. We adjusted the CRaTER thresholds based on
actual performance in the space environment, so we are all set to detect
high energy particles. Now we are stepping LEND through its different
configurations to optimize performance and characterize the background.
We have turned on decontamination heaters on the LRO Camera to drive out
moisture and any other volatiles before we turn on LROC.
And we have just finished powering on our Ka-band system and dumping
data at 25 Mbps (instead of 256 kbps on S-band--100 times faster). In
less than half an hour, we dumped 163 files from the spacecraft, while
we had only dumped 210 total on S-band since launch. This was the last
spacecraft component other than the instruments to get powered on.
LRO is 264,000 km (164,000 miles) from the earth traveling at 0.914 km/s
(2040 MPH). LRO has slowed down quite a bit, and we will continue to
slow down as we climb away from the earth on our ballistic trajectory.
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