The NEAR spacecraft

Progress Report: 09Jul99

Task:

To create a reference for Ann Harch, so that when she is told the time MSI is allowed to take pictures, she will know which direction to point that camera and at what times.

Processes:

Ann specifically wanted to know when to point the camera off nadir in order to reach problem spots on the asteroid. Realizing that Ann might be given and possible combination of NLR periods and DSN periods in which the MSI can not take pictures, we assumed that ANY spot may become a problem spot. Emily and I divided up the the 12 days into 5.5 hour periods, and split them between the two of us. We went through each period frame by frame, and decided on a beneficial off nadir pointing. We also made plate models for each of the 5.5 hour time periods. We made up a chart with a place for each alphabetized section of the asteroid, and under each letter we recorded the time period, the latitude that time period covered, and the aimpoint we used in order to get particularly good coverage for that section. (For instance, if the 111:03:30 time period covered section K well, we would write under the K heading, "111:03:30, lat 45.56 to 27.90, aimpoint 4/60/0". Note that the north or south direction of the orbit is indicated by the order of the latitude numbers.) If the time period only covered a certain part of a section, we noted that. The .REQ, .f, and .plate files are located in hermes.earth.nwu.edu:/work2/jedmonds/orbit/100k/lon_scans/1by3_sep_5.5_hr.

Results:

Have a look at the chart which contains our findings:
(Emily Peters and Jessica Edmonds, 7-9-99)

/NEAR/SEQ/7-9-99.html