MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
Mars Global Surveyor Mission Status
April 19, 1999
NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft is no longer in
contingency mode and this afternoon flight controllers have
turned the entire spacecraft to point the high-gain
telecommunications antenna toward Earth. The spacecraft is now
using that antenna to playback telemetry information that
controllers believe will help them further diagnose what caused
the hinge on the antenna to stop moving last Thursday night.
While no attempt has been made yet to move the hinge,
engineers are hopeful the data that have been returned today will
contain clues about what caused the hinge to stop moving. During
the weekend controllers sent a series of commands to the
spacecraft that turned off the hinge's motor. The spacecraft
used its star scanner to find reference points in space and
establish its orientation. The science instruments remain turned
off.
It is expected that later in the week engineers will send
commands to the spacecraft to move the hinge a small amount in
order to better understand its condition.
Mars Global Surveyor is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of
Space Science, Washington, DC. JPL's industrial partner is
Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, CO, which developed and
operates the spacecraft. JPL is a division of the California
Institute of Technology.
Further information about the mission is on the Internet at:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/
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