|
June 23, 2009
After a successful insertion rocket burn on the morning of June 23, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's orbit was established shortly before 6:30 a.m. EDT.
Rocket burns initiated by controllers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., have helped the moon capture LRO, which arrived after a five-day journey.
Now LRO begins its primary mission of mapping the lunar surface to find future landing sites and searching for resources that would make possible a permanent human presence on the moon.
Over the next several days, LRO's instruments will be turned on and its final orbit around the moon will be reached.
June 21, 2009
Right after launch June 18th, LRO's transmitter came on as planned and sent its status to us in the control center. The spacecraft reaction wheels spun up and absorbed the tip-off from the launch vehicle. We soon established commanding, performed the initial check-out, and deployed the solar array and high-gain antenna. We completed the initial activities with a set of thruster firings to verify proper operation, followed by a firing of the thrusters to remove momentum that was stored in the reaction wheels.
June 19 at 6:16pm, one day after LRO's launch, 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 percent! 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.
Our Ka-band system has successfully operated with the White Sands ground station, downlinking stored data at 25 Mbps. We will increase that rate to 100 Mbps after calibrating the antenna.
Today, we uploaded new alignment information for the star trackers and inertial measurement unit, compensating for system offsets that we measured during a mini calibration yesterday.
LRO is approaching lunar distance and a rendezvous with the moon on June 23 at 5:47am, when our orbit insertion burn will begin.
 Launch Success!
| 
