Mars Global Surveyor Status Report
19 Sep 2001
(Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
(DOY 255/19:00:00 to DOY 262/19:00:00 UTC)
Launch / Days since Launch = Nov. 7, 1996 / 1778 days
Start of Mapping / Days since Start of Mapping = April 1, 1999 / 902 days
Total Mapping Orbits = 11,327
Total Orbits = 13,010
Background Sequences - The spacecraft is operating nominally in performing daily recording and transmission of science data. The mm153 sequence has performed well since it started 01-156 (9/13/01). It terminates on 01-290 (10/17/01).
Other - MOLA Diagnostic Test #4 was performed on 01-256 (9/13/01). The MOLA team is in the process of analyzing the resulting data.
Roll Only Targeted Observations (ROTO) were temporarily suspended pending investigation of the C-Mode entry root cause. MGS entered C-Mode on 9/6/01 because the STAREX star processing software could not converge on a good inertial attitude following a ROTO. The ROTO did not cause the C-Mode entry, but STAREX performance may impact how we perform ROTOs in the future. MGS has completed 198 ROTOs to date.
All subsystems report good health and status. The spacecraft team continues to investigate the STAREX anomaly that caused the 9/6/01 C-Mode entry. The MOLA instrument team is still investigating the MOLA anomaly of 01-181 (6/30/01). The MOC instrument required a hardware reboot to recover from an anomaly that temporarily prevented it from returning properly formatted science data.
There have been 28 uplinks to the spacecraft during the past week, including new star catalogs and ephemeris files, TES instrument turn-on, MOC instrument re-boots, and standard instrument command loads. 5,755 command files have been radiated to the spacecraft since launch.
Delta-DOR experiments are scheduled for 01-267 (9/24/01) and 01-269 (9/26/01).