CODE :602
INDIVIDUAL:Paul J. Pashby
TITLE :Orbiting Satellites Project
WEEK OF :July 21 to July 27, 1994
EUVE continues to perform admirably; no new payload or spacecraft problems to report. Jupiter was EUVE's target for virtually all of last week, as comet Shoemaker/Levy 9 slammed into the Jovian atmosphere. Early results from EUVE include the post-impact detection of the element Helium. No changes have yet been seen in the Io torus. The star Alpha Erindani will be observed for three days this week before a return look at Jupiter on the 29th.
All spacecraft subsystems performed nominally this week. A nonstandard power arrangement due to the high spacecraft roll was implemented prior to the observation of Jupiter. Battery response in general has been good. Battery #3 is showing some signs of stress and is currently at a differential voltage value of 100 mV. This level will most likely decline with the return of our standard power configuration later in the week. One realtime pass was lost this week (data recoverable) due to the inadvertent deletion of a high gain antenna track by a member of the Flight Operations Team. New console procedures have been implemented to guard against such occurrences in the future. Testing of UCB-supplied ATC commands continues with steady progress. This week's testing will center around specific command macros that UCB intends to use on orbit.
An opportunity to perform a transponder B residual output test with the DSN on DOY 202/203 was not realized because JPL could not support the testing. New opportunities will be sought to fulfill this request of the GSFC Transponder Failure Review Team.
No new problems or incidents to report. Scanner C was turned off, the short wave spectrometer's count rate shutdown value was increased, and the unused sections of the Deep Survey detector were blanked to maximize the science data bandwidth for the Jupiter/comet observation.
EUVE will observe Alpha Erindani, then Jupiter, then the
star Wolf 630 in the week to come.