Update from Jutta Hübner, Integral Spacecraft Operations Engineer here at ESOC.

The third manoeuvre of the Integral de-orbiting campaign was successfully completed at 16:30 CET, 4 February.

Integral is now back under ‘wheel control’ (meaning its orientation in space is controlled by its reaction wheels) at the attitude planned for the upcoming science operations in revolution (orbit) 1504. Thanks to the reliable ground segment, all operations could be executed as planned with no deviations from the timeline. As ever, the satellite performed flawlessly!

Initial indications are that the manoeuvre performance was nominal. An initial check of the orbit will be done by the flight dynamics team here at ESOC on 5 February, which will allow us to assess the exact results of the manoeuvre.

Many thanks to everybody involved for the excellent work!

Kind regards,
– Jutta