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MARS SURVEYOR 98 MISSION STATUS


January 15, 1999

Mars Polar Lander

Mars Polar Lander continues in a healthy cruise state. During the past week, the flight team restarted normal attitude control processing using the star camera, successfully corrected a software bug in the on-board attitude control software that caused excessive thruster activity at attitude control mode changes, and slewed the spacecraft to the modified earth point orientation that is the nominal orientation for the start of its trajectory correction maneuver. As the result of the amount of flight team support required for these three activities, the first trajectory correction maneuver, previously scheduled for Monday, January 18th, has been put off until Thursday, January 21st, with very minimal effect on the fuel required. Future activities, in addition to the trajectory correction maneuver, will include spacecraft reorientations to assess stray light impacts on the star camera performance, and reconfiguring the spacecraft state for the long term early cruise conditions.

Mars Climate Orbiter

Mars Climate Orbiter continues in a minimal activity cruise state with minimal Deep Space Network (DSN) tracking. The spacecraft is very healthy.

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