ESA’s Steve Foley, the Spacecraft Operations Manager for Planck at ESOC, sent this in on Saturday, 19 October.
ESA’s Planck Spacecraft Operations Engineer Steve Foley, at rear, joined by Planck ‘Spacon’, Claire Walker (in middle), and NASA’s Robert Bowman from JPL preparing to send the final Sorption Cooler ‘Off’ command, 19 October 2013, at ESOC.
We marked the end of Planck science this morning with the switch-off of the Sorption Cooler and the two instruments. The operation took less than one hour and the simplicity of the final act belies the significance of the event.
LFI was the first to be commanded off. The final packet from the instrument was generated at 2013.292.06.45.56 UTC (19 Oct 08:45:56 CEST).
The Sorption Cooler was commanded off by one of the principle manufacturers of the cooler, Robert Bowman from NASA/JPL. The occasion was marked with several photos by his JPL colleague Dave Pearson who has been involved with the cooler for more than a decade. The final SCS packet was generated at 2013.292.06.56.16 UTC (19 Oct 08:56:16 CEST).
SREM was commanded off at 2013.292.07.05.35 UTC (19 Oct 08:05:35 CEST) .
HFI was commanded off starting at 07:15 UTC (09:15 CEST). The isotope tanks were re-opened at 2013.292.07.16.26 (19 Oct 09:16:26 CEST).
The instrument was finally commanded off by the HFI engineer Bruno Gandolfo, who was there at launch and responsible for the instrument activation in the first hours of the mission. The very last payload packet was generated at 2013.292.07.38.44 (19 Oct 09:38:44 CEST).
With regards,
– Steve
Discussion: one comment
I’m very grateful to have been allowed to send that command from ESOC to end operations of the Planck Sorption Cryocoolers. I appreciate the gracious welcome and professional skills of Steve Foley and Claire Walker at the Planck MIssion Control and Dave Pearson for bringing me back to the last days of flight operations of these coolers.