LRO Status

It is going very well. The rocket gave us a great ride--total energy is nearly exact. We are planning a 38 second mid-course correction burn--very short--mostly to correct inclination.

Attitude control system is working great, we acquired the sun within just a few minutes of separation. Solar array is deployed, power looks good, although a bit lower (5%-10%) than expected (not a problem, but we are investigating). High-gain antenna is deployed and we are using it for communication. Received signal within 1 dB of predicted. C&DH running without incident; recorders formatted and running without error.

Propulsion one-shots went well last evening--propulsion is in good shape. We did a delta H and unloaded the 20 N-m-s of momentum we got from the launch vehicle tip-off (fairly low rate)--closed-loop thruster mode worked well. Thermal is generally good; dampers on the solar array are hotter than expected but OK; we have off-pointed the spacecraft 30 degrees to reduce current through the solar array gimbal to keep the temperature down (this was planned).

We are planning the mid-course correction burn at 6:16 this afternoon.

Checkout of the load is underway at FlatSat right now. CRaTER and LEND will be powered on later this evening (after MCC).

At present we are traveling 3600 mph, having slowed down from the initial 24000 mph at Centaur separation. LRO is about halfway to the moon having traveled 103000 miles from the earth.