Monday, March 1, 2010

AMF-5, A Combined Thrusters and Main Engine Burn, Raises Perigee Above 15 Mm

Apogee Motor Firing #5 used the ACS thrusters and main engine to raise the perigee altitude of SDO to about 15,000 km on the way to our target of 35,800 km. (Using Kepler's law, my estimate of the current orbital period is about 15.4 hr.) We had a very smooth burn so we will use the main engine for the next burn that is scheduled for Tuesday evening.

Thanks to the slosh tiger team for their hard work on redesigning the flight software!