NEAR Mission Status Reports – http://near.jhuapl.edu

MISSION OPERATIONS:

The NEAR spacecraft continued to operate nominally in Operational Mode with Flight Computer #1 and Attitude Interface Unit #2 in control.

NEAR continues to Sun-point (GS-5). All instruments remained “ON” during this week.

NEAR is presently 179,310.6 Km from Eros (111,418.2 miles).

Version 1.11 of Flight Computer (FC) software was successfully loaded on October 27th to FC #2. This FC #2 software was dumped from the
spacecraft on October 29th during a high gain DSN support. It compared with no errors to the ground image.

The NLR instrument software was dumped October 29th as planned in support of efforts to construct a baseline version of NLR software for the
new NLR Brassboard DPU implementation.

Upcoming Spacecraft Activities:

The following are operationally significant activities planned for October-December time frame:

  • Dec 6 TCM 21 – test of TCM 20 “fix”
  • Dec 15 Flight Test of Rendezvous Sequence
  • Dec 17 NLR/MSI Co-Timing Test
  • Dec 20 MSI/SDC Flight Throughput Test

Dec 6 TCM 21 – test of TCM 20 “fix”
Dec 15 Flight Test of Rendezvous Sequence
Dec 17 NLR/MSI Co-Timing Test
Dec 20 MSI/SDC Flight Throughput Test