Mars Polar Lander Mars Volatiles and Climate Surveyor (MVACS) Lidar and Mars Microphone Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) Deep Space 2 Microprobes Deep Space 2 Microprobes Jet Propulsion Laboratory NASA Images, Images, Images Current Mission Status & News What We Hope To Learn Our Mission Mars Exploration Comments Or Questions? To Find Your Way Around Mars Polar Lander Mars Polar Lander

Mars Global Surveyor Mission Status

Wednesday, December 15, 1999 (DOY 342/19:00:00 to DOY 349/19:00:00 UTC) 

Launch / Days since Launch = Nov 7, 1996 / 1134 days
Start of Mapping / Days since Start of Mapping = April 1, 1999 / 258 days
Total Mapping Orbits = 3449
Total Orbits = 5131

Recent Events:

The mm009 sequence continues executing nominally the daily science record and playback events. The mm009 sequence will run through Wednesday December 15, at which point the mm010 sequence will take over. Last week, a change request was approved for Mars Global Surveyor to perform special targeted scans in order to obtain high-resolution camera images of the Mars Polar Lander (MPL) landing site. The mz030 mini-sequence will contain 10 imaging scans through December 19, with two to three imaging opportunities per day. The first of these imaging scans will be performed on Thursday December 16 at 13:38 UTC. Additional imaging will be performed next week through December 24. It is hoped that we will have successfully imaged most of the one-sigma landing ellipse by the end of this campaign. After the holidays, we will make a decision whether to continue these imaging scans in an attempt to fill in the entire three-sigma landing ellipse.

High Gain Antenna (HGA) Anomaly:

The HGA inner gimbal angle continues to decrease and is currently at 60.7 degrees. The inner gimbal angle will continue decreasing, reaching the location of the gimbal obstruction at 41.5 deg in early February. Over the last week, due to efforts to support imaging of the MPL landing site, work has been suspended on the new beta supplement mapping implementation. It is anticipated that this work will pick up again next week.

Spacecraft Health:

All subsystems are reporting nominal health.

Uplinks:

There have been 21 uplinks to the spacecraft during the last week, including new star catalogs and ephemeris files and the mm010 sequence. Total command files radiated to the spacecraft since launch is 4224.

Upcoming Events:

1) Final preparations of the mz030 mini-sequence to perform the MPL landing site imaging. Sequence is scheduled for uplink late Wednesday Dec 15, with the first image period on Dec 16 at 13:38:40 UTC.

Home Mars Polar Lander Deep Space 2 Microprobes Mars Climate Orbiter
Welcome Mailing List Links Credits

For questions or comments on this website please refer to our list of contacts.