POLAR Telecon Agenda for October 27, 2006

POLAR Telecon Agenda for December 1, 2006

Please note the corrected web site location below.

Agenda:

0. Upcoming Polar Telecon

1. Operations

2. Polar SWT Meeting

3. AGU Special Session Update

4. MFE Data Processing Status

5. Hydra Science Report

0. Upcoming Polar Telecon

Friday December 1, 2006

4 pm ET, 3 pm CT, 2 pm MT, 1 pm PT

PIs and their designated representatives will be telephoned at their usual numbers.

Other participants may call in at:

1-888-606-9536, Password POLAR TELCON

(Leader: John Sigwarth)

The web site for the final agenda will be:

http://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/polar/telecons/2006Dec1/

Future Polar Telecons

Next telecon: Friday January 26, 2007

Future Telecon Science Discussion Schedule

[Errors/omissions/preferences to: nicola.fox@jhuapl.edu]

January 2007: MFE

February 2007: CEPPAD

March 2007: TIDE

April 2007: PIXIE

May 2007: SEPS

June 2007: UVI

July 2007: MDI

August 2007: CAMMICE

September 2007: VIS

October 2007: TIMAS

November 2007: EFI

December 2007: Hydra

1. Operations

If you have any concerns about Polar operations, please contact Nicky Fox (nicola.fox@jhuapl.edu)

Sun Angle Maneuver

The Polar team successfully executed Attitude Adjust Maneuver #9. The commands to start the maneuver were on time at 13:30:09z and the FOT verified 248 pulses. The spin rate after the maneuver was within range at 9.999 RPM. The final sun angle was 90.4° and there is still some fuel remaining. The new sun angle drift plot, based on the new data can be viewed at http://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/polar/telecons/2006Dec1/sunangles2006_11_15.png

Upcoming Polar maneuvers

The next Polar maneuver is currently scheduled for 01/09/2007. The Polar operations team met this week to discuss this attitude adjustment and a subsequent maneuver planned for late February 2007. Tentatively, the first maneuver is planned to increase the sun angle above 91.6° through the end of February when the second maneuver will be needed to keep the spacecraft sun angle above 91.6° and to expend the remaining fuel and inert gas in the tanks.

Unattended Weekends

The FOT has implemented ROBOTT release 5.0 (that automates sending the daily Stored Command Table) and transitioned to unattended weekends. No problems have been reported since this change has been made.

The 12 hour shifts during the weekdays are still being covered as usual and the MOC staff has a pager to cover emergencies on the weekend.

MOC staff pager: 301-224-0386

Mike Machado should be contacted by cell phone for instrument emergencies.

Mike's cell phone: 443-694-4317

Data capture

We are continuing to use the hemispherical antennas for aspect angles between 0-60 degrees in addition to the belt antennas for spacecraft communications. With the new operations configurations, we have achieved significantly higher data quality despite poor aspect angles with overall data capture rising to 90.4% cumulative for the year.

Polar Attitude Determination Error

Reminder: The FDF has reprocessed the 12-week periods centered on the February and August high attitude error times in reverse time order.

2/9/2006 – 5/13/2006

12/4/2005 – 2/5/2006

7/3/2005 – 10/2/2005

3/6/2005 – 4/17/2005

1/23/2005 – 2/27/2005

12/05/2004 – 1/16/2005

7/04/2004 – 10/10/2004

3/7/2004 – 4/18/2004

1/11/2004 – 2/29/2004

2. Polar SWT Meeting

The Polar mission operations are currently scheduled to finish on Monday, April 2, 2007 and at this time it is anticipated that the spacecraft will be decommissioned. We would like to hold a science workshop in conjunction with these milestone spacecraft operations. In addition, there will be a small gathering of PIs in the control room when the last command is sent to the spacecraft. We would then have the science meeting on the following 2 days.

3. AGU Special Session

The proposal we submitted for a special session at the Spring 2007 AGU which will be held in Acapulco, Mexico has been declined.

The following is excerpted from the message received from Craig Kletzing:

I have decided to decline the proposed special session on the Polar era. This is primarily because AGU policy is that special sessions are to focus on specific science topics, not broad reviews of an era. In addition, I'm also concerned that given the very wide set of science topics given as examples, the session could lose focus.

I can offer, however, that if you want to have a set of papers about Polar themes grouped together, you could suggest that authors enter a schedule request that they want to be grouped with other Polar papers, and I will do my best to put them together.

Best regards,

Craig (Kletzing)

SPA-SM Secretary

In response, it was pointed out that the AGU has a tradition of holding special sessions that review the accomplishments of major missions and to discuss the direction for future study. After discussing the email, we intend to submit a revised Polar era special session request for the fall AGU.