POLAR Telecon Agenda for April 1, 2005

Agenda:

0. Upcoming Polar Telecon

1. Budget news

2. Operations:

        Tape Recorder Failure

        GTM Anomaly

        Sun Angle Maneuver

3. MFE Data Processing Status

4. Polar/EFI Science Presentation

 

0.  Upcoming Polar Telecons

Friday, April 1, 2005

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: 1-888-425-9158, password POLAR TELECON

(Leader: John Sigwarth)

 

The web site for the final agenda will be:

http://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/polar/telecons/2005Apr01/

 

Future Polar Telecon

Friday, April 29, 2005

Future Telecon Science Discussion Schedule

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

Apr 29 2005:   TIMAS

June 2005:  HYDRA

July 2005:  MFE

Aug 2005:  CEPPAD

Sep 2005:  TIDE

Oct 2005:   PIXIE

Nov 2005:   SEPS

Jan 2005:  UVI

Feb 2005:  MDI

Mar 2006:   CAMMICE

Apr 2006:  VIS

 

1. Budget news

The Impact Statement on the Deletion of Polar Mission Funding in the FY 2006 Budget was submitted to Chuck Holmes at NASA HQ on March 16, 2005.  As requested by NASA/HQ, the impact statements from all of the missions terminated in the FY2006 budget were collected by Jim Slavin and submitted as a group.  Copies of the impact statements have been sent to Barbara Giles.  Each impact statement was to be no longer than 1.5 pages.  The responses from the Polar team were compressed into the single Polar response.  The Polar impact statement can be found on the agenda web site.  There has been 'active' discussion of the budget defect at the joint SScAC/ESSAAC meeting the past two days in DC.  The committees will report to Al Diaz today.  A summary of these discussions is expected soon from Chuck Holmes.

 

 

2. Operations

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

Sun Angle Maneuver

The Polar spacecraft maneuver occurred on March 2, 2005.  The spurious nutation of the spacecraft which was observed between some pulses on November 10, 2004 was not a factor during this maneuver.

Orbit analysis following the maneuver indicates that the target sun angle was not achieved during the maneuver (probably due to an inaccuracy in the predict before the maneuver) and the drift predictions show Sun angles lower than desired. It is expected that the Sun angle will fall below 90 degrees in mid-April. (Sun angle predicts and results.) The FOT has begun plans for a further small maneuver in order to maintain the safety of the platform instruments. It is expected that the maneuver will occur April 20-22, 2005. More information on the exact schedule will follow.  

 

Polar Tape Recorder Servo Errors

Within the last 2 weeks, the remaining Polar tape recorder has been experiencing servo errors at a rate of 1-10 per day.  Prior to that time the typical error rate was about once per month.  Engineers are looking into changing the mode of operation to reduce the number of servo errors.  No data has been lost due to these errors. 

 

GTM-like Anomaly

Corrupted telemetry for EFI, CEPPAD, TIMAS and MFE instruments was noted at Acquisition of Signal on February 23, 2005 at 21:35 UT.  Realtime commands to set spacecraft telemetry module (GTM) and instruments to science Mode-2 cleared the anomaly.

 

3. MFE Data Processing Status Update

The MFE team has compared samples of the high time resolution, 54 Hz magnetic field data that is telemetered during science mode 2 in the Polar/HYDRA data stream to the data sampled at 25 Hz and telemetered directly by the MFE.  The two data sets are found to agree within the digitization. The MFE team is taking steps to incorporate the 54 Hz magnetic field data for the Polar/HYDRA data stream into their standard processing as soon as possible.

 

4. Polar/EFI Science Presentation