ACE Weekly 01/23/2013 - 01/29/2013 All ACE spacecraft subsystems are performing as expected. ======================================================================== Orbit/Attitude: Type Attitude Date 01/29/2013 DOY 029 2013 Thrusters 2R 4R+ 4R- Duration 5:15 min Start 15:40:32z Stop 15:45:47z HGAStart -8.87deg HGAStop +8.98deg SunStart 10.37deg SunStop 9.47deg SpinStart 5.0734rpm SpinStop 5.0745rpm Nutation 0.06deg Firing 27 pulses FuelUsed 0.0907lbm FuelRemain 116.6396lbm FinalSCMass 1350.900lbm The next attitude maneuver is scheduled for Tuesday 02/05/2013. ======================================================================== OCRs: None ======================================================================== Activities: Data Capture: 100% DOY 020-027 2013 The SWEPAM-Electron current has slowly increased over the life of the mission. At launch, the maximum current used was ~0.1035Amps. This past week, the maximum current used had reached 0.1105Amps. The FOT had set an alarm for this value. With a maximum current of 0.1105Amps, the instrument is slowly approaching the onboard shut-off value of 0.1137Amps. The SWEPAM instrument team was notified and they are reviewing an increase to the onboard shut-off value. Note, the instrument current usage cycles from 0.099Amps to 0.1105Amps over a ~1 minute cycle. ======================================================================== Anomalies: None ======================================================================== Average Sun Angles With Weekly Attitude Maneuvers Dates Avg Sun Avg SEV Sun-SEV (indicates extra s/c tilt) ----------- ------- ------- ---------------------------------- 10/18-10/23 11.0deg 5.1deg 5.9deg 10/23-10/28 9.3deg 3.3deg 6.0deg 10/28-11/06 7.3deg 2.0deg 5.3deg 11/06-11/13 8.4deg 3.8deg 4.6deg 11/13-11/20 10.3deg 6.3deg 4.0deg 11/20-11/27 12.7deg 8.6deg 4.1deg 11/27-12/04 14.9deg 10.1deg 4.8deg 12/04-12/11 16.0deg 10.9deg 5.1deg 12/11-12/18 16.8deg 11.3deg 5.5deg 12/18-12/27 16.5deg 10.7deg 5.8deg 12/27-01/03 16.0deg 9.1deg 6.9deg 01/03-01/08 15.2deg 7.2deg 8.0deg 01/08-01/15 13.8deg 6.0deg 7.8deg 01/15-01/22 12.3deg 4.0deg 8.3deg 01/22-01/29 10.6deg 2.4deg 8.2deg The following is background information that will be included in each weekly report. The project has accepted the SWEPAM team proposal to keep the spacecraft at larger sun angles with weekly attitude maneuvers. The SWEPAM-Ion instrument has a series of channel electron multipliers (CEMs) and larger sun angles allows more responsive CEMs to measure the solar wind. The maximum sun angle follows the Sun-Earth-Vehicle angle (SEV). The SEV angle is determined by the size/shape of the orbit around L1. When the spacecraft antenna is pointed directly towards earth, the spacecraft's sun angle will be equal to the Sun-Earth-Vehicle angle. With weekly maneuvers, the average sun angle can be kept 4-6deg more than the SEV angle. This results in the spacecraft antenna aspect angle being kept between 5 and 9 degrees and never pointing directly back at earth. For reference, the SWEPAM team prefers sun angles above 13 degrees. With the current size of the L1 orbit, the sun angle will be above 13 degrees for ~45% of the time.