[meteorite-list] LADEE Update - October 17, 2013

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/ladee-status-update-oct-17-2013/

LADEE Status Update
Ames Research Center
Oct. 17, 2013

During the NASA shutdown, the LADEE mission continued to perform its critical 
maneuvers and capture into the commissioning orbit around the moon. The 
trajectory correction maneuver (TCM-1) was completed on Oct. 1, and set 
the spacecraft to rendezvous with the moon on Oct. 6. The Neutral mass 
Spectrometer (NMS) cap ejection on Oct. 3 was successful. The first Lunar 
Orbit Insertion maneuver (LOI-1) on Oct. 6 was very accurate, and required 
no course adjustments afterward. This is impressive performance of the 
propulsion system, given the size of the LOI-1 burn. This maneuver put 
the spacecraft in a 24-hour elliptical lunar orbit. The LOI-2 maneuver 
on Oct. 9 also was very accurate, putting LADEE into a 4-hour elliptic 
lunar orbit. The third and final LOI-3 burn occurred on Oct. 12, and put 
the spacecraft into the 2-hour commissioning orbit (roughly 235 Km x 250 
Km). The LADEE spacecraft commissioning activities are now complete, and 
the instrument commissioning activities have begun. The LDEX and UVS aliveness 
activities were completed successfully on Oct. 16, with both instrument 
covers deployed. These instrument cover deployments were the last remaining 
planned critical events for the mission. All critical maneuvers and all 
instrument cover deployments are completed at this point. The science 
instrument commissioning and lasercom primary experiment will be conducted 
through mid-Nov., at which point the spacecraft will start to drop down 
to the lower lunar science orbit.

NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley designed, developed, built 
and tested the spacecraft and will manage the 100-day science mission. 
Ames controls the spacecraft and executes mission operations.