Monitoring Rosetta's New Avionics Software

IRON AND ICE

illustration only

Paris (ESA) Aug 05, 2004
In the reporting period (23 July to 30 July 2004) the spacecraft was monitored daily to ensure thecorrect behaviour of its avionics systems after the upload and activation of the new version 7 of the on-board software.

Taking the opportunity of this period of daily contact a number of tests were carried out, which in turn served as confidence checks of the functionality of the new software:

the two Navigation Cameras were checked out on 25 July and the first pictures received showed the Earth-Moon system from a distance of 70 million km.

for the first time the new strategy for reaction wheel offloading in an optimized attitude was used on 27 July, to reduce fuel consumption in high disturbance torques conditions.

the redundant Transfer Frame Generator (TFG) and Decoder were tested as part of the redundancy commissioning a special Star Tracker test was carried out on 29 July to track stars which have been identified for elimination from the catalogue.

a new thermal characterization exercise was carried out on 29 July, to observe the thermal behaviour of the spacecraft when the Sun is shining on the Z side with an inclination of 50 degrees over the +X axis.

The TC files containing the patch commands for the redundant avionics processors have been uplinked to the on-board mass memory. The patch of the redundant processors to the new software version 7 is planned for the beginning of August.

At the end of the last New Norcia pass in the reporting period (DOY 212) Rosetta was at 71.9 million kilometres from the Earth. The one-way signal travel time was 3 minutes 59 seconds.

IRON AND ICE

Comet Cruiser Glimpses Earth

Moffett Field CA (SPX) Aug 05, 2004
The banner image, taken by ESA's Rosetta comet-chaser spacecraft, shows the Earth-Moon system from a distance of 70 million kilometers (42 million miles). This is close to the maximum distance reached by the spacecraft so far this year.

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