All goes well with the critical Launch and Early Orbit Phase (LEOP) activities at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt!
Today, the mission operations team are focussed on completing the OCMs – orbit correction manoeuvres – that will gently nudge Metop-B into its final orbital position. There are thruster burn slots available at 20:46 CEST today and early tomorrow morning. In fact, Metop-B was delivered into an almost perfect orbit, so the manoeuvres need only be done within the plane of the orbit.
From this morning’s mission operations report (06:28 CEST):
- Metop-B has now completed almost 21 orbits and is continuing to perform excellently
- Orbit is nearly circular at about 801 km altitude, in a 98.7 degree polar orbit
- Payload instrument antennas deployment and Payload Module initialisation complete
- Power generation is stable at ca. 4.5 kW in sunlight; the solar array is tracking the Sun as expected
- Total fuel at lift off 315.6 kg; consumed so far: 2.286 kg
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