LRO Status July 18-19, 2009

Above STK images are of the start of the Star Cal and at target

LRO continues to perform very well in its commissioning orbit.

This weekend we performed LEND and LROC NAC Star Calibrations (see below STK images for the start of the Star Cal and at target). Data collection continues for all instruments, except for LAMP. LAMP Phase 2 will begin later this week.

Hope you all have seen and enjoyed LROC’s images of the Apollo Landing sites at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/main/index.html
Or
http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/index.html

Congratulations to our totally awesome LROC team for making history!! Congratulations to all on LRO!!

Cathy

Apollo Images from LRO!

At this site--> http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html The one above is Apollo 14

Congratulations to the LROC Team and the entire LRO Team for making this possible!

First Mini-RF Images!

The first images from Mini-RF, the synthetic aperture radar on LRO, is posted here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Mini-RF/news/radar_tandem_searches.html

LRO Commisioning Orbit

For those interested in such things, LRO"s commissioning orbit remains very stable. The plot shows the phase-plot of the commissioning orbit for 90 days from the July 12th OD solution. The polar plot is Eccentricity (radial) vs Argument of Periapsis (angular). The orbit evolution remains bounded with AoP near 270 (periselene over south pole) and eccentricity is the neighborhood of 0.04. Eccentricity does very throughout each lunar cycle though.

LRO July 10-12 Status

The above STK image is of LRO on DOY 193

The LRO Spacecraft continues to perform nominally in its commissioning orbit.

On Friday, we updated the Safing tables and Safing RTSs as was planned prior to launch. Spacecraft ephemeris validation tables, ST and Gyro Cal tables were also uploaded.

With the Mini-RF data collection start on Sunday evening, all instruments have collected or are collecting data.

LRO Status

LRO continues in her commissioning phase in the 30x199km commissioning polar orbit about the Moon. Today was a relatively quiet day for LRO with activities limited to some spacecraft housekeeping activities and the as-planned operation of Diviner, LROC WAC, CRaTER, and LEND in data collection/observation mode. Mini-RF is off at present, LAMP is powered but not observing, and LOLA is on but not lasing.

Tomorrow we plan to upload updates to the spacecraft Safing tables and RTSs. An activity always planned for this juncture in the mission. Saturday NAC imaging is again planned with our first off-nadir slews to perform the requested targeting.

7 and 7!!!

Above is the STK image of LRO on DOY 189

Today we completed LAMP Activation Phase 1a. The LAMP team reports that they are “happy.” We set DLRE temperature set points to their requested values, the DLRE team reports that they are “happy, happy.” We also activated Mini-RF and they are “happy” as well.

The LRO Spacecraft continues to make the Ops and Engineering Teams "happy" too :-)

As of July 8, 2009, LRO has successfully turned-on all 7 instruments in its Payload Complement: CRaTER, LEND, LROC, LOLA, LAMP, DLRE and Mini-RF!!

Congratulations everyone!!

LAMP Activation Begun

Today we began the LAMP activation sequence and Diviner has begun its nominal scanning sequence.

LRO is in Orbit #150.